The emerging sport of drone racing is taking off in Australia, but advocates say it is yet to get the wider recognition it deserves.

First-person view racing — or FPVR — involves flying specialist lightweight and often homemade quadcopters around a course at speeds of up to 140kph.

There is an official league in Australia comprising of 10 member clubs, the latest of which has been founded by Zack Martin-Taylor in Townsville.

“It’s amazing. You’re travelling at a crazy fast speed … you can get tunnel vision,” Mr Martin-Taylor said.

“It starts to blur after a while. You can lose your depth perception, which can cause you to crash … it’s a crazy feeling.”

But while FPVR is rapidly becoming more popular, most people still confuse it with mainstream photography and videography drones.

“When I say first-person racing they think photography drones, nice and slow taking those stunning shots,” Mr Martin-Taylor said.

“But when I actually show them a video, they didn’t know this existed. They didn’t expect that something so small could fly so fast.

Source
ABC News