Local Park Drone racing - something different

[Chavezshutter]

Hello,

One of my many hobbies is RC flight. I started many years ago with RC helicopters, then fixed wings of all types and finally FPV drones. The drones my brother and I fly are not for aerial photography or video (though we have one or two that are) but intead are for acrobatics and racing. They are built from components that have to be soldered and configured. We fly manual mode only which means there is no stabilisation and the pilot is responsible for all the angles that the drone makes. We fly these things through cameras mounted on the drone and the drones themselves can reach speeds of over 130 kmh and accelerate to these speeds in under half a second. Being "on board" on a machine like this is pure adrenaline. In this video we are riding from my brother's point of view, my machine is the other drone and the area we are flying is a local park where we have spent many warm afternoons learning how to fly, crash, rebuild and repeat on the road to FPV flight.

Hope you like it

FPV racing Melbourne

 

[ZAMIR PENA]

wao amazing, i have never tried. It is seen that it is something with a lot of adrenaline, maybe one day I can experiment with drones.

 

[Jack]

That’s amazing hobby Chavezshutter , is these drones are expensive? Here in London they were doing drone racing as well, someone told me that one of drone could cost up to €5000

 

[Chavezshutter]

Jack The drone itself isnt too expensive, but in order to fly one you do need an RC transmitter radio as well as FPV googles to see the video feed from the drone. Once you have those then you can use the same equipment for anything RC, including more drones. For goggles and the transmitter its around $800 AUD. Then to build a drone, depending on the size ( you can have tiny indoor flyers) you can pay up to $450 AUD for all the components to make a standard 6" racer/acro model but once again you will need things like a soldering iron and the know how to put it together. You can buy ready to fly models similar and they will also sell for about $600 AUD but you will still need a radio and goggles.

Overall FPV is not that crazy expensive as aerial photo and video plaftorms (like a DJI), we dont carry gimbaled high quality cameras also as you can tell you actually have to fly our drones, with things like DJI you "nudge it" the way you want it to go, its all self stabilised and GPS. Our flight times are low as well with an average lasting about 4 minutes, but i tell you its 4 minutes of basically disconneticting from it all, pure bliss . I sometimes fly these things backwards and the cameras on these thing only point forward but i love acrobatics since my heli days. I have seen giant aerial platform drones capable of lifting cine cameras that were over $20 thousand dollars. They are strictly for proffesional cinema, documentary type stuff.

 

[Greg]

It looks great but not easy to do , when I watch racing fly drone videos, it looks easy, but I know this is not the case lol

 

[Jack]

I'm pretty sure it's very interesting hobby Chavezshutter, and probably very expensive and need to brake the bank. Can you participate to events and make money?

 

[Chavezshutter]

Jack racing is extremely competetive, an Aussie young kid was a world champion for a number of years, still is top tier i believe. My brother and I would see this young kind barely big enough to carry a radio transmitter at FPV meetups, practiced everyday for years. Like anything it takes crazy dedication and many hours of flight time. The other side of the hobby where there is some money are people who use these drones to record scenes that simply cant be captured by something like a DJI. JohnnyFPV is such a pilot, he has worked in movies, ads, etc. Here is one of his videos done in Abu Dhabi:

JohnnyFPV - dynamic scenic drone flying

 

[Jack]

You are right Chavezshutter, it's just takes lots of efforts, passion and practice to make such of great videos, and of course money for investing. I'm assuming such of rapid drone cost lots of money? As I don't think you are able to drive at that speed with DJI drones.

 

[Greg]

it must take time, parameters , learn how to fly, upgrades ...

 

[Helix_2648]

One of my colleague from our engineering has also a drone since some months with a 4K cam and I was impressed as I saw the pictures and videos the first time! Sunset pictures or videos reaches a never expected quality with this because you can reach areas which wasn't accessible before.