BOULDER CITY, NV—When I say "Drone Rodeo" you probably get the image of a lively gathering of drone pilots, gracefully moving their quadcopters through the air, and even competing to see who has the best piloting skills. Oh, and they're all riding horses, wearing big cowboy hats, and singing Garth Brooks in perfect tune.
In reality, the Drone Rodeo isn't that romantic. It's essentially a few dozen people he hanging out in the middle of the Nevada desert. There are a couple of tents (one with couches), a food truck dishing out free grilled cheese sandwiches, a drone racing course, and an inexplicable orange Lamborghini.
The reason for the remote location—the Uber driver who ferried me to the event told me it used to be a shooting range—is simple. You need to be five miles from an airport for most drone operations, and there are several airports in the Las Vegas area.
This is the drone rodeo's second year. I didn't make it out last year, so I guess I can safely say that this is my first drone rodeo. I went with a specific purpose in mind, to check out the Epson Moverio BT-300 drone piloting goggles, but lingered to watch some skilled pilots maneuver tiny, high-speed racing models through a set course.
And, in person, what the pilots do with these tiny racers is really a beautiful thing. They climb with elegance and then seem to fall out of the sky—gliding through a gate and then moving onto the next one. If pilots want to show off they'll couple these maneuvers with spins and flips.
It's tough to tell what's going on from the sidelines. The pilots themselves get a first person view through VR goggles—the most popular brand for drone pilots is Fat Shark, a name whose origins can only be speculated upon. ESPN has broadcast some races, but from the perspective of a cameraman, I can imagine just how tough it would be to track the tiny subjects moving across the course with enough tightness to deliver impactful footage and with enough width to show the scale of the whole thing.
But racing drones have cameras to send a video signal back to the operator, and that can be used to intercut with race footage to make it more compelling. The racers on show at the Rodeo were UVify Draco quadcopters, a new model launching at CES. They're small and nimble, and can fly at speeds between 75 and 100mph. UVify provided some footage from the drone's perspective, shot at the Rodeo, below.
The Rodeo wasn't just showing off racers. Attendees were able to test fly models like the DJI Mavic Pro and the Phantom 4 Pro in order to get a better idea of what aerial videography and photography is all about. Larger models, including the Inspire 2 were also on display.
I also got to see a demo of the PowerUp FPV, a paper airplane with a motor that's controlled via a smartphone. But windy conditions and some issues with Wi-Fi were issues. On the first attempted flight, the FPV crashed straight into the ground. The pilot adjusted the engine position to compensate for the wind, but in two subsequent flights the plane lost connection with the controlling phone almost immediately into flight and entered its return to home mode, landing a few dozen feet away.
The Drone Rodeo isn't a huge event—of course, everything looks small compared with CES—but it's a good venue for aerial video and photography enthusiasts and adrenaline-loving drone racers to get together and check out the latest innovations the industry has to offer.