2016 Drone Racing World Championships

From Toby Osmond:

190 of the world's best drone and wing pilots, from 37 countries, gathered to crown the first World Drone Champions in Hawaii. FPV wing and freestyle pilots individually competed and FPV pilots raced individually and in country teams. All pilots ran three heats on both tracks, adding the six total lap times together, ranking each pilot on their total time. The Drone Sports Association (DSA) divided the pilots into two group (A= 8 heats of 8 pilots each; B= 12 heats of 8 pilots each).

No practice laps were offered on either the long or short course. Group A (64 pilots) were the first to qualify on the long track. Group B were qualified on the short track, which turned disastrous. 96 pilots attempted to qualify in a small space with little DSA man-power or hardware. A couple hours into Group B qualifications, the DSA closed the short track, deciding to qualify all 160 FPV pilots on six total laps on the long track. Due to downpours of rain on Friday (surely the organizers thought to factor in the Hawaiian tropical weather?), only three qualifying laps occurred instead of six laps. Group A pilots did not fly at all on Friday, but were in attendance.

Tempers flared and frustrations from multiple countries were voiced directly to DSA. It was clear to everyone that the DSA had not planned anything, including equipment, staff, racing rules, a live-feed, facilities or anything that would've made this event run smoothly.

Saturday's semi-final FPV race started around 1:00pm with the top 32 pilots, cutting the list down to the top eight individuals. The list included Cain Madere (USA), Shaun Taylor (USA), DonKi Han (Korea), Paul Nurkkala (USA), Couturier Benoit (France), Niklas Solle (Germany), HunHuang Li (China), Nick Willard (USA). The final race commenced, only to be stopped by the rain. The crowd waited in anticipation for the showers to move on. Given the all clear by AMA official, Rich Hanson, the second race began and all racers cleared the first red gate. The heat was on for the crowning of the new world champion! Shaun Taylor had a clean run at full throttle, leading him to victory! Paul Nurkkala trailed Taylor to a 2nd place win, followed by Nick Willard for 3rd. The United States swept the podium in the individual competition although honorable mentions go to the Korean Team whom were competitive all weekend.

Following a celebration of Shaun's victory, the top eight qualified country teams flew a total of 15 laps (5 pilots, 3 laps each). In the final heat, Shaun Taylor flew against his lovely wife, Teng Ma, who was flying for Team United Kingdom. Each heat became more intense and pilots where neck-in-neck through the gates and the obstacles. The United States came out on top again for a 1st place win, followed by a 2nd place win for Team Korea, and a 3rd place win for the United Kingdom.

Congratulations to all who were victorious! The DSA made some improvements to the racing experience from New York City, Drone Nationals. The large televisions/monitors that had heat information and brackets for double elimination were appreciated and highly used by pilots and team managers. A shout out to Adam Negron, Dustin Pennington, and Nate DuCary for your patients, professionalism, willingness to listen to pilot questions, address concerns and suggestions, and organize the heats. Your hard work was noticed and appreciated by all. A big thank you to Honorio Madriaga for your quad retrieved services, cheerful attitude, and your hospitality was awesome! You helped decrease the time spent between heats. One last thanks to Hawaii and the people of Kualoa Ranch for hosting World Drone Championships!

Shaun's Gear

From the custom built racing frame, the ARC 200 to the award-winning Graphene Battery range, check out the gear that gives Team Multistar its winning edge.

How the Race Gear is Developed...

Simon Cox is the Multistar Race Team Manager/Category Manager for Multirotors. Here is what he had to say about the gear Team Multistar uses:

We have built a category in what Shaun normally uses and had at the Aloha Cup and the World Drone race. Some items like the frame were only used for some of the racing as with racing at the last second chances on the line. The motors are a product line that is coming soon and Shaun had prototypes of these motors.

As with all my team we don't just use them to fly with gear we sell we actually use the team to develop and design products for our future range. This I think is a lot different from how other teams are run. As I come from a long history of RC car racing for over 30 years and have been sponsored myself by companies like HPI / T.O.P. Racing and a few others, I know this is how they develop world winning products and try and use the same strategy for Multi-Rotors.

Read More

Read the full article by Toby on HobbyNews: https://www.hobbynews.com/articles/d...016?viewmode=0