I'm Sam Sheffer, and in a couple of weeks, I'm entering a drone racing competition, and
I don't have much experience flying drones, but I've got some friends helping me out.
Right now I'm headed up to the Bronx to get my first, real world flying lesson.
So we made it up to the Bronx, here with the flying crew, and... let the games begin.
Also, I've already learned something.
They refer to drones as "quads," because apparently drones have a bad connotation to them.
Quads, quadcopter, it makes sense.
We're here in the park.
I'm about to immerse myself in a simulator on a laptop before I put the goggles on and
actually fly for real.
That was nice!
I've got Andy, and Mike and Aldo.
They are really good at flying drones.
I'm embedded in a simulator right now with this controller.
I'm getting some practice.
Mike says he did 80 hours in a simulator before he ever flew.
I'm about to do, I don't know, probably 30 or 40 minutes, and then fly one of these handicapped drones.
It's hard.
It's definitely not as easy as flying that little, tiny micro drone, and I keep crashing.
I probably destroyed $50,000 worth of drones already.
Damn it!
Try to make some nice, smooth turns.
This is level flight, which is what a DJI does.
You're flying with an angle, so when you're going forward, you're like this.
So if you want to go down, like fast, you want to pitch forward like this, and you want
to go down.
Oh wow, like actually fly downward?
You could do that.
Give it a little yaw.
And then you're going to have to give it roll.
And you're going to have to pull your nose up a little bit.
The props hit the antenna and it breaks the antenna like this.
I've only had one race under my belt, but I've been flying since mid-April.
This guy and I started around the same time, but he's had more "stick time."
I just spent an hour in the simulator.
I feel okay, but now this is happening.
So this is Andy's custom drone, with a cage on the outside, so I can crash it and it would
be pretty okay.
No FPV (first-person view) goggles just yet, but I'm going to try and fly this sort of beginner, baby drone.
It's very difficult.
I'm like kind of getting it.
Again, it's just such precision that goes into flying this thing.
He's doing great--don't put it in a tree!
The most subtle of movements makes this thing go nuts.
I mean you're moving this thing millimeters at a time and you're getting such accurate movements.
The mini drone is so easy to fly, looking back on it.
I mean that thing is a joke.
The simulator, I was getting pretty good at it, but there's obviously nothing that compares
to flying a drone in real life.
You see it and you feel it and the responses to it and you hear it.
It's like a real visceral experience versus a simulator you're playing on a computer.
That is ballistic!
Holy f*ck!
Just so you have a really casual run, just so you can kind of get the idea of it.
I don't want to overwhelm him with speed.
It's very dizzying but very cool.
And I'm just watching.
Just cutting through the trees and stuff.
It's kind of dizzying if you move your head at all, so that's why I'm trying to hold very still.
It's very disorienting because this is not VR, this is first-person view, so--ooh!
There goes the tree.
That stopping power is absurd.
Damn.
Nice flip!
Randy here, who you've seen in one of the other videos...
I'm entering his drone race, and he's pretty damn good at flying drones, and he just came
out here to hang and fly.
He was zipping, and I mean zipping at like 80, 90 mph like 20 feet in front of my face.
What place did you say you would be surprised if I don't come in?
If you don't come in last place, that would be a coup.
I spent the morning doing the drone simulator and flying that beginner drone.
Next steps are to build the drone, get way more stick time, sign up for the race and
practice, practice, practice, practice, practice...