JERSEY CITY — “I’m no Superman,” Cain Madere said, but he flies like Superman, except he wears little electronic goggles instead of a cape and tights, and keeps both feet on the ground.

Mr. Madere, 19, loves his drone’s-eye view of the world — the fast-moving scene transmitted from the onboard camera as the remote-controlled machine skims over the grass or climbs to the treetops. “You definitely get the experience I assume Superman would feel,” he said. “You get every bit of the experience you would actually get flying like a bird.”

Drones of a feather flock together; how else to explain why about 100 drone pilots spent much of Saturday competing in time trials for the Liberty Cup race in a field behind the Liberty Science Center here? The top 24 expect to spend Wednesday facing off in still more time trials and complicated elimination runs on a tricky course. The organizers promoted the event as the first drone race set against the Manhattan skyline. The second, the 2016 United States Drone Racing Championship on Governors Island, will be held next weekend, with some of the same competitors but different organizers.

Drones like the one Mr. Madere races are not what retailers such as Amazon have in mind for door-to-door deliveries. His cannot carry much more than a camera to send the live, full-color video feed to his goggles, and it zooms along at speeds of 80 miles an hour or so, probably way too fast for the protein bars and facial toner that you ordered online last night.