- So my name is Travis McIntyre, and I go by M0ke,
and we are drone racing today.
I kinda just stumbled upon drone racing.
I never been into RC stuff,
and my friend had one, and I played with it
a little bit and got myself one
and just kind of fell into a hole.
- I've been flying radio-controlled planes
and drones for about six years.
And I've been racing competitively for almost two years now.
- I got into drone racing actually when
I could no longer ride my motorcycle.
I was stuck in bed for medical complications,
so a friend told me to go find a hobby.
Went to a hobby shop, and I found a drone
that was a quarter of the size of this.
After a couple of months, I built one,
started racing them, and it's been a new life passion
that I cannot put down.
- When we first started with drones
about three years ago, it was mostly drone combat.
With larger drones in like a boxing ring
kind of environment.
But in the last year or so,
drone racing has really come into its own,
and really has started to dominate
the hearts and minds of drone pilots.
- These are called FPV drones.
That stands for first person view.
And the way they work is, each drone has a
camera onboard with a video transmitter.
That sends a signal wirelessly to FPV goggles.
So as a pilot, you wear these goggles,
and they transmit directly to your eyeballs.
- When you have the goggles on,
it's like being in the cockpit of this little
teeny tiny drone.
And you pretty much have the freedom
and get to see what a bird sees.
And it's kinda the closest thing to
just being able to fly around in the sky.
- One of the cool things about this community
is a lot of people design their own equipment.
Me and my friend actually spent the last few months
designing this little drone, the Twitch 109,
from Unique FPV.
What's really neat about this, this is the smallest rig
at this race.
And it's basically won me a spot at Drone Nationals racing
later this year.
- [Marque] The race track is lit up,
and the drones are lit up.
So it's almost like a sci-fi experience
or like a Tron race, if you will.
We've got 40 of the world's best pilots here
and are already tearing this track up.
It's really exciting.
- Racing, to a large extent, is all luck.
It's not getting ran into, not having a video go out
for some stupid reason, not having something break.
It's exciting, but once we put the goggles on,
we're sitting in the cockpit,
and the rest of the world kind of disappears.
- I compete for fun and the sheer thrill of it.
And today I've been doing really good.
For a lot of people, though,
they compete for the top place.
They like having the thrill of being
the number one pilot.
And for a lot of people,
they go to these events with friends.
So there'll be two or three buddies
that fly together all the time.
They'll get together, they'll carpool the different races.
- The pilots that race with ASL
are really an interesting mix.
The demographic is all over the map.
Some people are trying to leave their day jobs
and become full-time professional drone racers.
And so some of our pilots here today
are making that transition.
- Right now, I guess you could say
I'm a semi-professional pilot.
I get some money to do some stuff.
But right now, I have no major sponsors.
So it's all me for the most part.
- For drone racing to be successful as a sport,
we need to gather fans
and make them really enjoy watching.
So by making the track lit up
and making the drones light up,
I think it makes a better story
for all the spectators to watch and follow.
- [Zoe] A year ago was one of the first events,
the Drone Nationals in Sacramento.
Since then, there's been drone races
every weekend consistently for the last year.
And it's only gotten more and more crazy
as time has gone on.
- The industry itself has really nailed down
how to best present the drone sport to the audience.
And so I see it growing tremendously large.
I see it on cable TV, network TV,
lots of drone events being streamed.
And I see it being a legitimate, viable sport.
The drone conversation used to be about camera drones
and privacy and all these other issues.
But in the last few months, the conversation has
really turned away from those sort of
politically-charged issues,
and has really started talking about the fun
and the future of how drones can be used for good
as a tool in sports and as a toy in sports.