- Sam, What do you think about flying FPV Drones?
- This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
- When I first started flying this FPV Drone.
This is what I looked like.
(laughs)
(drone buzzes)
This is tough.
I looked stupid.
And Sam you've been practicing, right?
- Yeah. Yes.
- You wanna show us your skills?
- Okay.
- All right Sam, let's see what you got.
(squeaks)
(all laugh)
- There you go.
- Hey, you're way up there.
Oh my God Sam, you're gonna lose it. Sam you gonna lose it.
Oh my God.
- Did I do good?
- It's harder than it looks, like really It's not easy.
- So that is why Sam is training on this little tiny drone.
I upgraded and I have this one, which has a GoPro on top,
and then our buddy NURK here.
- Brought mine out. (groans)
- Holy crap.
This is a RED camera, and this is Paul Nicolla.
Also known as NURK FPV on YouTube,
YouTube channel right there.
Click it, check out that stuff.
- Please go to it.
- First of all, I've seen RED cameras being flown
on drones before but not an FPV Drone.
That is kind of crazy.
So a regular drone they're designed to be as smart
and as easy as possible to fly.
If a regular drone was a luxury car,
it's a smooth, easy to drive vehicle.
To turn that into an FPV Drone,
you would essentially rip out the air conditioning,
you would rip out all the passenger seats out of it,
you would strip down the doors,
you would make everything as light as possible
and put a massive engine in it.
If it's gonna create weight,
it has to be for better performance.
So this FPV Drone is designed to be as small as possible.
So literally every little ounce has been shaved off it
to make sure that it can still get pretty decent images
in a super compact frame,
- Even to the point where the GoPro has been torn down,
like there's too much camera on a little tiny action cam
like I'll just take some of that half that out.
- Exactly. But then you could also go the all the way,
make it as powerful and insane as possible.
- And that's what we've got here.
(laughs)
So these props are about 2.5 inches, these are 13 inches
and there's two of them stacked on each corner,
so it's an octacopter.
- So can I fly it?
- He says, you suck. (laughs)
- Let's start with something on the ground.
- What do you mean on the ground?
- Oh, you want me to start with that thing?
- Yeah. I think you're fond of that.
- Dude, that's actually pretty dope.
- It's like a steering wheel?
- Yeah, I know, give it to me.
- Watch the master at work.
(drone buzzes)
Where's the controller for the money shot, I'm ready now.
(laughs)
(upbeat music) (drone buzzing)
(drone buzzes)
(laughs)
- If I get a jolt of adrenaline, flying that little thing,
what's it like flying it with a RED?
- Leading up to the flight, I'm pretty nervous,
like I've got a little bit of (shivers).
I'm thinking about it but as soon as it takes off,
I forget about all that.
It's just in the moment,
make sure that we're not crashing it,
we're gonna bring it home safe.
- Robert was telling me about the show you have.
- So I compete in the Drone Racing League.
It's a TV show on NBC.
I've competed in it for three years
and I'm the 2018 World Champion of Drone Racing.
- That's cool, Yeah.
- I got a big trophy. It's like that big.
- Is it really that big?
- Yeah, it weighs like 30 pounds.
- Holy crap. That's actually a big bro, now I'm impressed.
That's what you start with.
You know, You don't go "I'm the world champion at 28"
You just go,
- "Hi I'm Paul" - Hi, I'm Paul.
I have a 30 pound trophy back at home.
(laughs)
- 30 pounds.
So you know how people are like, yeah I'm into FPV.
You're not really into FPV until your trunk looks like this.
- I'm trying to fly a 100 to 150 batteries
in a day on a track.
In order to do that, I need to charge fast,
so I built this charger,
so I could just (ba-ba ba-ba).
- You can also charge your phone?
- Yeah, we've got USB 3.0,
- This looks like car batteries.
- They're actually L-I-F-E batteries.
I'm fearing the day that I get like rear-ended
and those light on fire, I might die.
- Oh my God.
Your van will literally--
(explosive sound)
(laughs)
Thanks for doing that graphic, Justin.
- So I built this from the ground up.
The frame is called the project 399 super G.
It goes zero to 60 in less than a second.
So it's instant power because it's got a 10
to one thrust weight ratio,
like a Formula One car, is like six to one.
And this is a relatively slow drone,
it's not even a Racing Drone, it's a freestyle drone.
- It's definitely faster than my DJI Mavic.
- Yes.
(laughs)
- Are you gonna trust me with that thing?
- Absolutely. I've seen you fly, you're great.
- I don't think he knows that I fly
in stabilization mode and not acrimon--
- What was that?
- Nothing yeah, I'm totally good with this, yeah.
So this has an angle like that
because the drone is always going forward,
so these don't really like to fly level,
these like to go fast.
- Yeah.
For people that are learning to fly FPV,
I actually really encourage people to not try
to hover, hovering is the hardest thing to do.
But if you kind of keep it moving forward
and just kind of use that reference point
of things moving past you,
you get a lot better control over the drone, I think.
- Okay. Let me see you fly at first though.
- Okay.
- Though I don't know what to expect, Yeah.
We're not even at the big drone yet
And I'm already starting to feel a little nervous,
just watching him fly this thing.
(drone buzzes)
- What was that?
That thing's like a freaking firework.
What?
Oh holy (beep).
What?.
Oh my God, are you kidding?
Okay, here.
Do the glasses, do the glasses.
- Oh, snap.
(laughs)
Holy crap.
- Like when you descend on a DJI drone,
it's like da-da-da-da.
When this descends it's just dropping.
Its literally--
(drone buzzes)
Watching that thing go upside down is crazy
because the fastest I've ever seen anything dropped,
it's just free fall.
But this shoots it down towards the ground.
Dude, you gotta try this,
experience this slow drone.
- (laughs) Holy crap.
- Caren how do you feel?
- Oh my gosh, It's crazy.
Oh men, I know what you're buying next.
- (laughs) Yeah.
(drone buzzes)
(laughs)
That's a good ride.
I am intimidated by this.
- There's no reason to.
So if you break it,
if you smashed into a million pieces,
it's on me, that's fine.
(laughs)
Well, the same goes with his RED later so,
(laughs)
- Okay. - You got it.
(drone buzzes)
- You guy you doing pretty good.
- It's in the air still.
- Wait so when you do the roll,
do you just shut off the throttle?
- You can just leave some of it on.
- A little bit of throttle.
Okay, Here we go.
Oh my God.
Huh? Well it's actually kind of cool.
You can actually fall for a while.
So if you can spend a whole 35 seconds
just waiting for it to free fall
while you figure out where your horizon is.
I can just land it right here?
- Yeah.
(drone buzzes)
- Oh, I feel like I just like landed from a parachute.
Oh my God, thank God I never thought I'd see you again.
Oh gosh.
Oh so scary.
All right I'm ready to fight the RED.
- Let's do it.
- Gosh.
- What's interesting is you don't just do this as a hobby.
You're actually a professional.
You go around travel to places
and actually do legitimate shoots, right?
- Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I love doing content creation
and making YouTube videos and stuff,
but I love shooting for movies and commercials
and stuff like that using crazy drones like this.
- So what are some of the shots
that they've asked you to do?
Because I'm assuming the go-to drone shot would be,
a typical regular drone,
and have this hanging off a gimbal,
but they must be giving you calls
when they need to chase something fast.
- Yeah, so it's obviously a very stylized shot.
Like you're doing something that's different, right?
It's not gimbal, that's not super smooth.
So like something that I've been asked to do a lot
is for example for like a documentary,
they bring me in and say, "Imitate this bird."
So fly the same way that this bird would.
(upbeat music)
- NURK is a fine inch and this is the money shot.
Hello, here goes nothing.
(upbeat music) (drone buzzing)
- How are you so good bro?
- Dude, just lots of practice man.
Surprisingly, it feels a lot like the other one.
Well, do you think we will notice that it's not plugged in?
Should I get the cable and we'll do that?
(upbeat music) (drone buzzing)
- I can't do this.
- That was probably one of the scariest things
I've witnessed in a while.
I posted this on Instagram
and let's see what people are asking.
Oh, that's my buddy Chris.
He says, "ask him if he's flown on any more trains.
- Trains.
Yeah, my most popular video of all time was the...
That's called NURK's flight of the year 2017.
I flew over, under and into a moving freight train.
And no, I haven't. The FAA was not very thrilled
about that video.
- I bet.
- I have a receipt that I can show you, (laughs) but--
- Oh wait.
- So no, I'm definitely not flying around any more trains.
- Did you really have to pay a fine?
- I did.
I could have bought a car with that amount.
- Are you serious?
Do you hear that? A train.
- Yeah yeah.
- Hey, get it up and let's get a try.
I got a great idea.
What are we up to? No good.
- No good, that's definitely true.
- It has to do something with the RED FPV Rig.
All of that by finnglink.
- How did he figure that out?
- But yeah, that's it for this video?
Make sure you check out NURK FPV.
- I'll find this more content about that Rig,
bout all my other stuff,
how to build drones from the ground up,
like I have like step-by-step tutorials all that stuff.
So come on over and hang out.
- Good deal. All right See you guys later.
(slow upbeat music)