Eric Tadsen
With a pair of first-person-view (FPV) video goggles and a live camera feed, Charlie Toms, right, can see what his drone sees.
A small flying robot zips around the Elver Park soccer fields on a Sunday afternoon.
Weaving through an obstacle course of orange cones and pylons, the Frisbee-sized aircraft moves with amazing speed and agility, propelled by two sets of rotors.
A few dozen yards away, its pilot, Charlie Toms, sits comfortably in a camp chair under the shade of a tent. He sees what the drone sees, thanks to a pair of first-person-view (FPV) video goggles and a live camera feed.
“It’s like Star Wars pod racers zipping through the forest,” says Toms, a 41-year-old radio frequency engineer. “You can feel it in your stomach when you go up and down. It almost feels like flying.”
Toms is a member of the Mad City Drone Racing League, a fledgling group of hobbyists looking to bring the rapidly growing sport of FPV drone racing to Madison. Formed this March, the league has 15 members and meets twice a month for drone-building workshops at the Bodgery makerspace on Robertson Road. They staged their first races this month at Elver Park on July 11 and 19.
“This is getting popular all over the world,” says Timm Murray, the league’s founder. “Madison is in a good position to get something like this going.”
FPV drone racing can best be described as a live-action video game, combining the most exciting aspects of remote-control aircraft and virtual reality. Pilots fly the four-propeller drones, or quadcopters, using two ultra-sensitive joysticks that control pitch, roll, yaw and throttle.
“It’s pretty hard to control this thing,” says Toms as he hovers his drone between and above two pylons. “With a fixed view, it’s hard to tune out distracting sounds.”
And while the drones are held stable by a mathematical algorithm, they’re notoriously tricky to fly. In a sport where high-speed acrobatics are the goal, crashes are common.
“People getting into this sport should buy a lot of extra propellers,” Murray says.
Murray, a 32-year-old programmer, became interested in drones after reading a magazine article about FPV racing. He started the league and connected with experienced hobbyists like Toms — who has been flying remote-control helicopters and airplanes for years — as well as other novices, including a group of about 10 Epic employees.
Most FPV quadcopters are in the 250 class, meaning that the distance from motor to motor is 250 millimeters, but drones come in all shapes and sizes. Hobbyists can build from preassembled starter kits. Others build drones from scratch. Modifications make each drone distinct. For the Mad City League, drone building is a labor of love.
It’s easy to see why the sport appeals to techy types, but Murray thinks FPV drone racing has the potential to go mainstream. There are similar hobby groups popping up in cities all over the world; devotees imagine a day when drone races will fill stadiums and draw scores of spectators — just like in Star Wars.
“We want to become a big league that has pilots coming in from all over the world,” Murray says. “I want Madison to get up to speed.”
Mad City Drone Racing League
Founded: March 2015
Members: 15
Cost to get started: About $500 for standard FPV racing model and other equipment; smaller drones go for $50-$100
When and where they build: Second and fourth Saturdays at The Bodgery, 4444 Robertson Rd.
