What is drone racing exactly?
Drone racing is exactly what the name is telling you. The pilots use an FPV (First Person View) system, this is mostly done with virtual reality glasses, to allow them to race the drone just like if they were in the cockpit. The first person view is a functional requirement, as the pilot needs full control over his drone.
Despite there are some drone races here and there, drone racing is still relatively new. It is getting more and more attention and funding from companies which only confirms that drone racing will eventually get popular pretty soon.
What kind of drone do you need?
First person view racing drones are specifically made just for one purpose, racing. Most of these drones are small in size. Originally, the drones had bigger dimensions but due to the need for maneuverability improvements with high speed, the drones started getting smaller. Also, The smaller dimensions reduces the chance of them crashing into an object and it allows them to fit through smaller spaces.
Websites such as helipal.com are selling these First person view drones. You can make your own too, but that will cost you a lot more work. Speed is extremely important for obvious reasons. You should try to aim for speeds of at least 50mph (90 km/h) or above. Moreover, the drone need to be durable and easy to repair cause of the fair chance that you will crash it somewhere. At last, the quality of the FPV camera is crucial. You need to know where you are flying in order to maneuver smooth over the track.
How to learn flying a Race Drone?
My advice would be to first learn how to hover a drone and control it. After learning the basics of flying a drone, you can start learning how to race. When you first try the First person view, try to fly on an open grass field for instance and get accustomed to the point of view. It’s important to learn how to do tricks such as nosedives, flips, rolls and other things because you might eventually use them when racing.
Start racing!
Do a quick Google search and try to find a local league. https://www.droneracers.nl/ is a Dutch website where you can find everything about Drone racing within the Netherlands. I would recommend you start off in a local league before. It’s good to get some experience before you enter into competitions.
Curious how a Drone Race looks like? Watch this video!
Sources:
https://www.drones.nl/nieuws/2015/06/stijgende-populariteit-van-fpv-racing-in-nederland
http://www.fpv-racing.nl/
Hey Marcus,
First of all, really cool! Drone Racing was something really rare and last year there was no real league or any races at all. You had to have friends to organize your own racing competitions; as you mentioned local leagues. Although really cool, still many people have not heard about this and thats why I like your blog. Do you do drone racing yourself?
It is probably still too expensive for the mainstream crowd to start racing. How much does a really good racing drone cost nowadays? Perhaps in the near future this will be more common.
Nonetheless it really cool that more and more people are doing this!
Hi Marcus,
It is really cool to see that drones are becoming mainstream and that it is accessible for the crowd to buy one.
Have you thought of where drone racing could lead to? I am really sure that it has a lot of potential, but I have only read about it on the internet on specialized websites and not in mainstream media. However, as Xidong mentioned, it is still quite expensive to buy a drone.
Maybe we need to look for different models to enable drone racing. We can go kart racing without a kart, but we cannot go drone racing without a drone…