FPV Drones

I got into the FPV drone racing hobby from 2020 to 2023. I started out building a small 5” class quadcopter in my freshman dorm and then joined my university’s club racing team in outdoor practices. Soon, I competed in two Collegiate Drone Racing Championships, where I was a pilot for team Northeastern. I developed an intuition for the right combinations of propellers, motors, batteries, and electronic speed controllers (ESCs) and learned to troubleshoot a myriad of electrical, radio, or control problems. This, coupled with my rigorous approach to custom drone design outside of racing, made me a powerful UAV engineer both in theory and in practice.

Most recently, I flew at the 2023 Collegiate Drone Racing Championships hosted in Atlanta, GA. There, I flew my best laps in terms of controllability, consistency, and placement. I was certainly far from being in the upper brackets, but I was improving over my last competition, which was hosted at Grand Forks, ND in 2022. At the Georgia race, I consistently went through gates, wobbled less, and successfully finished laps. I even won first in this heat in this YouTube clip. I’m in the lower left corner with the pilot name “Saniel” a combination of my first name and the first letter of my last name:

My Best Flight

Before competing, I had to submit videos of completing a select track within a certain amount of time, as shown in the YouTube video from January below on the left. On the right is a video of some later tracks we practiced after the competition.

In April 2022, I got to fly to North Dakota with several of Northeastern University’s Drone Club (NUAV) pilots and race drones in the Collegiate Drone Racing Competition (CDRC).

For those unfamiliar with First Person View (FPV) drone racing, pilots build a drone with a camera, wear goggles to see through that camera, and use a remote controller to manually pilot the drone.

We then fly alongside other pilots through obstacles to see who can complete a lap the fastest.

A group photo from the competition.

Racing Drone Specs 👀

The moment Ian (pilot name FlyGuyIan) flew into a net close to our pit station.

We each built our own drones and competed with pilots from around the United States! I put together my own quadrotor using the best gear I had available:

  • Kakute F7 Flight Controller

  • x4 RDG 2207 1300KV Motors

  • HobbyWing 4-in-1 40A ESC

  • ImmersionRC Ghost Atto Receiver

  • Eachine TX805 VTX

  • RunCam Racer Nano 3 Camera

  • HyperLite Floss 3.0 Frame

  • Taranis QX7 RC

  • FatShark HDO2 Goggles

NUAV’s awarded trophies alongside some top-performing drones.

At the end of the competition, Northeastern University placed 2nd as the fastest team! Unfortunately out of 47 pilots, I placed 40th, but for my first competition, I’m proud of the result.

The drone I competed with was not my first. In the Fall of 2020, I completed my first drone and flew it a handful of times. Through this experience, I built my fundamental knowledge of quadcopter technology that prepared me for Northeastern’s drone club and CDRC.

Competition Results and Early Beginnings

My first drone after I finished building it in my freshman dorm.

This is What Practice Looks Like

Me practicing in the Velocidrone simulator

Before racing in North Dakota, I practiced in a simulator called Velocidrone. Unlike cinema drones that have built-in control modes that make piloting easier, FPV drone pilots directly control pitch, roll, yaw, and throttle. This means we need to practice our intuition of drone control in simulators before flying and crashing our expensive devices. So, in the video I repeat laps around a map I found online to prepare for CDRC.

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ADAPTS Research Project - NUAV

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Autonomous UAV Racing - High School