F1 of the skies: Busselton drone racer takes on nationals

Drone Racing is one of the world’s newest sports, and Busselton already has a pilot in the big leagues.

Ethan Evans was fast enough to qualify for the Australian Drone Nationals, and raced in Townsville against the best in the country in a four-day tournament.

Evans qualified in the top 70 out of 136 people who entered, allowing him entrance to the race. This despite being one of the youngest in the competition – at age 14 – and having barely 8 months of racing experience.

“Last year, I went up to states and just watched them racing. Then they invited me to come out, and ever since I’ve been racing once a month there,” he said.

“For the last three race days I’ve placed second.”

He does it flying a drone he made himself. His custom setup with motors, flight controls, and camera equipment is all hand picked and hand built to reach speeds well over the highway speed limit.

It’s controlled with a typical radio controller, while he sees the action through First Person View goggles, which allow him to fly as though he were sitting onboard the dinner plate sized racing machine.

But even the best equipment can come undone, as he found out the hard way on his first day of nationals racing.

“During my qualifying races for the first two days, I had terrible video, and I couldn’t figure out why. I tried changing goggles, antennas, everything you can think of,” Evans said.

“I was flying in black and white the whole time, and on the far side of the track, I couldn’t see anything.”

One of the few rules of drone racing is that the camera feed from the drones must transmit at or below 25mW, so it doesn’t interfere with the other pilots’ signal. Race scrutineers found the pilot on the next channel over from Evans was transmitting at around 200mW.

Evans was given a solo run to make up for the lost time, but it was little help. Out of the 16 runs he did in the tournament, he said he was flying blind for 12 of them, unable to complete more than two consecutive laps.

“That’s one of the reasons I placed where I did. I essentially started on the third day of four.”

“Once they sorted it out, I was able to do four laps, and I was able to improve tons.”

Even with what was a major setback, the relatively inexperienced Evans still finished 47th out of the 70 competitors. On top of that, he entered the freestyle competition as well, and finished 5th overall. He said he’s happy with the performance, but he’s confident he can come back stronger next year.

“I’ve only been racing for eight months, and because I live in Busselton, and the racing is in Perth, we have to drive two and a half hours to get there, so we only go to one race a month.”

“Compared to other people, who can be there most days and do 50 flights a day, that’s not a lot.”

Through sponsors, he’s been able to get some race equipment of his own, which his school has given him permission to setup on the oval on weekends to practice the competition’s standardised tracks.

“Once I’m able to set up the track by myself, I’ll improve tons. I’ve already improved just at the race days. Going from being one of the last to being second consecutively, and every time I’m getting faster and faster.”

Racing isn’t the only side of drones Ethan spends his time with. Flying drones is something he’s keen to make a career of. When local girl Phoebe Stewart entered Australian Idol this year, Ethan recorded a lot of footage for use on television.

He’s done videos for real estate agents, where his skills on the tight and twisty race courses come in handy for video tours of houses.

He also has a Youtube channel, Ethan FPV, where he uploads footage of his freestyle runs, and cinematic videos of the south west coastline.