This article first appeared on Propwashed. Click here to read the rest of the article here.
From the moment I first donned my FPV goggles and took off in a miniquad, I knew I was hooked. Quadcopter racing, you see, is unlike anything else, and I’d like to chat about that in this article. Here are five reasons why drone racing is my all-time favorite hobby:
1 – Possibly the greatest flying experience around
Drone racing is all about perfecting the First Person View (FPV) flight experience. FPV first started emerging in RC more than a decade ago, beginning with model airplanes. FPV on an airplane is thrilling, but something was always missing. You are tied to the structure of the airplane and can only look in the direction of forward flight. Even with sophisticated systems that tie the camera to your head movements, your vantage point from up high is restricted, as most planes are meant to fly in a single direction.
The same can be said of flying a photography drone via camera. While you can rotate the camera 360 degrees, the sense that you are “flying” gets lost in the robotic non-responsiveness of the aircraft. You are just a spectator to the experience of flight.
Drone racing changes the game with a combination of agility and power. The flight camera is fixed on most racing drones, but your flight experience is anything but boring. Racing quads love to fly sideways, upside down, looking straight at the sky, or down at the ground. A good pilot makes his miniquad his own personal flying camera with which he can keep anything in constant view. Think of it as flying like a bird rather than as an airliner.
Want to see this in action? Check out a video where we fly through the seasons!
I have several hundred hours of experience flying all types of general aviation aircraft, including small two-seater “prop planes” you see buzzing around the sky on sunny days. While these aircraft are thrilling to fly in their own right, I genuinely believe that racing drones are the truest form of flight I have yet experienced, and my feet never even have to leave the ground.