hey it's norm from tested I'm here at the California State Fair where it's
hosting the first national drone finals competition this Scott reference you're
the race director of the drone Nationals tell us about the event yeah it was epic
that's all I can say is it was just epic and the reason why I was epic is that we
were doing a lot of experimentation on a lot of different things and this is the
first time that we ever had all these volunteers all together first time ever
in the history of fpv racing we had 120 pilots across nine countries and we had
two national TV stations broadcast it live so that's pretty epic now pilots
have been competing on their own for a while now underground races meetups
every time you drive by you see the flags basically you know some fpbs going
on but this is event of a whole other magnitude just in terms of the
organization live streaming getting heats getting actual competition tell us
about the gear required because there's a lot of logistics required just to get
this stuff set up yes so what we were trying to experiment with is is drone
racing a scalable sport is there going to be a drone sport a legitimate drone
sport in the future and so this was the question that we all had on our minds
there's a lot of people that are interested in putting a nickel on the
slot but at this point was it going to be feasible and so my little take away
my little benchmark was going to be could I have eight pilots in the air at
5:15 when all that entire Midway started rolling with everybody else's webcam
every all the IP all the cell phones and this is a big stadium of 12,000 seat
stadium and so it has radio or you know radio frequency issues and all that kind
of stuff so we were all testing that into what I asked is I called up every
everybody in the whole entire industry as far as fast as I could get and say
stop being competitor for the day and let's do typical fair
which is you compete against cows and pies and drones right and so in that way
I got everybody to suspend their business of business competition and
then I had people that were working just head-to-head on solving these big
barrier issues because I couldn't sell them all myself I just have to have
everybody else help us on that part of it from a technology standpoint
fascinating because FPV racing really lends itself to being a spectator sport
you can sit in the stands wash the quads fly or you can actually put on a few
goggles because it's broadcast on an analog frequency and so you just see
waves of people putting on these fat sharks or whatever they wore or watching
monitors and getting exactly what the pilots seeing and hopefully not throwing
up not that itself makes it really unique and we saw that today right yeah
yeah yeah and I when I'm what my experiment for that was is that is the
fat shark goggles or displays is that going to be a new fashion accessory that
binoculars once were for racing as we were going into that area and what's
exciting for me is that you know I came from a big V our background and been
interested in augmented reality for quite some time and so I see we've been
inching along in the space of this great mix of virtual reality the first pieces
of virtual reality I've seen of that it's been contextually bolted together
is why you see like on a you know the first and tenth on any football game
where the first yard you know that first and ten line is mapped in a contextual
relevance to the field well we're getting to that space now where the
drone racing is still locked in 2d space we're still on the 2d plane where I'm
headed with this thing is 3d racing with racing hoops and flags in a 3d space and
when you take your goggles off they're not there so we're heading in that
direction and that's a very exciting space to be you want to develop a course
get the pilots comfortable because they're really talented pilots and
there's an analogy because I want a soccer field right here does analogy
maybe NASCAR down the stands watching but there's also maybe like a like ice
skating because there's a performance aspect to it they're they're really
showing off their skills everything they've practiced in their local parks
and beaches and that is a whole other part of the competition right yes yes
yes and so I'm guessing out of the whole thing we just saw today we we probably
had two 3,000 people watching on our lives
dream today we probably saw at least five new tricks that came out of that
you know like Chad no wax vertical corkscrew where he flew like at a
90-degree angle and just corkscrewed it that way that was epic it just that I've
never seen that before or Zoe's inverted flight you only seen that in in 3d
helicopter and so she was flying inverted flight with a quad and so in a
competition you might have had somebody do that in their backyard but never in a
competition and like that so this is the innovations that are really really quite
exciting I'm getting chills when you mention this stuff because it really
feels like you know ninety skateboarding and X Games when you see you know the
top competitors kind of doing things that no one's ever seen before that's so
awesome always gonna happen next year oh yeah oh yeah and a lot more ever over
here and what was interesting about this mace is that this was also a chest from
the regulation point of view and so we had two big barriers we had we hit the
radar to big government agencies that was in FAA and FCC and so instead of
going oh you know whining and cringing and stuff like that I talked to John who
came over John is the FAA agent that came over here and I said John you need
to be my mentor because I need to understand all of your 30 40 years of
big air shoe show races because he's the he's the FAA inspector for all the
airshow big air shows and he's seen a lot of stuff and I said tell me if I do
something critically wrong and if I don't and you see something that I need
to fix give me your nod give me your wink and
let me fix it because what we can do is if it's fast and iterative we got a lot
of smart guys around here who can really fix it fast and he's like right on let's
go and so that's when the FAA suddenly got started playing in a really
proactive sense that I'm I got an a lament or who's an FAA you know agent
and that's pretty cool this is now their best case study that we can go back and
say here's our best case study to help change and lobby for better fpv racing
that's scalable it's really breaking new ground working through those growing
pains and love that you're working with not only the experienced organizations
aeronautics organizations but also the agencies in charge of regulating this
stuff and everyone's having a lot of fun so what I'm gonna do now is chat with
one of the competitors and see how they went
cool man thank you so much Scott thanks for coming out it was awesome it's great
to meet you thank you okay and now I'm here with Chad final glide Oz cuz you're
from Australia you made a big trip over here it's competing the drone nationals
how you doing yeah pretty good very tied has been a pretty full-on week
yeah you guys compute it yesterday and today and you just actually competed in
the finals heat your heat of the finals key tell me about this course and and
what you thought about the course oh it's a great little course it's quite a
tight course a flowing course if you're taking the right lines like any racing
course like with cars it's quite easy but if you get off line
you've got Flags you've got banners you've got gates there's lots of things
that can take you out so you've got to be careful you just don't go too fast
that's right because a lot of people if you crash that's it you gotta make all
five laps and get the best time you did five laps in your qualifier in like a
minute and a half correct yes that's insane
no I really want to ask you about the freestyle competition because for a race
you've got to make the turns what you learn the course you got it freestyle is
really interesting because it's almost like ice skating where there's like
difficult maneuvers you can do and you're building like a three minute
performance what's your approach to doing a freestyle routine look my what I
tend to do when I go flying by myself is just that so I just pretended that I met
in a park and having fun it's kind of like painting the sky or like skateboard
skaters in a half pipe or BMX riders doing stunts it's just it's an
expression of you and your emotions at that time and I'm literally I've got a
routine of tricks that I can do and just try to flow them in together and I
really enjoy making videos on a youtube channel
and putting it to music I really enjoy the editing I enjoy McCown trying out
new tricks and and just doing new things like that so this is really competitions
just an extension of what I like doing in when I'm at just it with the friends
let's talk about some of those tricks in their routine in your head what are the
things that you know you're comfortable doing and did you take any risks in your
routine some things that you thought might be more difficult that might get
you crashing well the big issue here is you got lots
of flags everywhere so when you're doing tumbling tricks you can actually get
distracted by all the flags and and can put you off so it's no different to what
I'm doing normally but just got to be careful of everything there's different
obstacles and it's a smaller course to what I'm used to as well you're tumbling
you're flying upside down bouncing up what are some of the things if someone's
just starting out flying a quadcopter fpv and they can do basic turns what
what are the tricks they can learn what would you recommend flips and rolls is
what you start off on that's probably the hardest one to get there being
upside down in a quadcopter is quite disorientating because using a fisheye
lens you can get disorientated very very quickly so flips and rolls and I always
just simply say get yourself a setup that's very robust that you're only
break props so you're not afraid to damage anything and you learn from your
mistakes so a lot of the tricks that I've learnt
are just simply from doing something and stuffing it up and going well that was
different and then working out and then refining it and all of a sudden you have
a new trick and people go wow how'd you do that and we got a predator set up as
well you've of course like everyone here built your own quad can we look at your
gear and what your quad is made out of this is a pretty much like most of the
quads it's a carbon fiber frame this thing's called an alien and all credit
to my good friend Brian back in my hometown of Brisbane he just designed
this quad and gave me this frame two weeks ago and it really blew my mind how
balanced of a quad it was and are you I did used to fly different frames and two
weeks before the Nationals I decided you know what I'm going to try try different
frames so it was it was a big big risk for me to take but it seems to have paid
off the guys that immersion immersion RC certainly got me out here and I got to
give credit to them for getting me and the guys in Fatshark
if I if I wasn't for all these people helping me out I just
get it it's a long way well we're glad you're here and thank you for an amazing
performance in the freestyles good luck in the finals heat and thanks thanks a
lot it's great to meet you now alright thank you