Florida’s First EMMY Award-Winning FPV Drone Pilot
Technical Achievement: Building A Custom Mini FPV Drone - 2022
Built, engineered, and piloted my own FPV (First Person View) drone small enough to fly safely indoors and around people
Utilized the drone to enhance the viewer experience and create unique aerial perspectives by flying inside businesses and locations
Flying FPV drones allow for inventive storytelling in a groundbreaking industry and helps sell sponsored content to clients
Over the past two years, I’ve conquered one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to do professionally: Learn how to build, engineer, and fly my own FPV drone. If you’re unfamiliar with FPV, it stands for ‘First-Person-View.’ I wear goggles and fly the drone with a remote controller while getting a live video feed of where I’m filming. It’s like a real-life video game, similar to the immersive world of virtual reality. But I didn’t build just any FPV drone, but one that is small, lightweight, and can be safely flown indoors and around people. It weighs just under 300 grams, spans 4 inches wide, protected with padded guards over the propellors, and carries a light-weight stripped-down HD GoPro HERO 10. This new photographic tool produces aerial perspectives we’ve never seen before. Learning how to fly this drone has revolutionized how I create original content.
Flying FPV drones for the first time comes with its many challenges and it’s hard to figure out where to even start. It took countless hours of research figuring out what equipment to buy, how to solder wires and assemble a drone, how to safely store and charge lipo batteries, how to connect goggles and the remote to the camera on the drone, tuning the drone motors, running stabilization software, upgrading antennas, and so many other technical learning lessons to even count. But before you take this freshly built drone out for flying, you have to learn how to fly.
FPV drones are fully manual and don’t have any safety features that prevent it from crashing or running into something. The pilot is in full control. Crashing, breaking, and rebuilding your drone is inevitable in the world of FPV. Downloading an FPV drone simulator and practicing on your computer for several weeks is best before you start flying in real life. Once you’re comfortable enough in the simulator, you can take your drone outside and begin practicing in an open field. After hours of practicing and crashing at parks, vacant lots, and open land, I was ready to start flying for stories at work. Months later and this technical achievement has become one of the best tools I have when filming lifestyle content around Florida.