Make your own racing drone

Racing DRone

All the drone racing They are becoming more and more popular, in fact, there are more and more official competitions for this type of device. That has encouraged amateur runners to grow in number. However, getting a good racing drone could be expensive if we want a Pro one, but with DIY, we can assemble a racing drone ourselves at a very affordable price.

For this there are many possibilities already on the net, some tutorials that teach us how to assemble our own drone, others that show us comparisons of the best drones for racing, etc. The truth is that the possibilities are quite wide, you could even buy a good drone and prepare it yourself for the competition, which is where we are going to focus in this article to make it something more genuine.

What I need?

DJI FPV Goggles

Well for have a good racing drone You should mainly focus on three fields:

  • have the best control system possible. Being able to handle the drone properly can make the difference between winning or losing a race.
    • Some transmission systems do not have a long-range, so when the drone moves away we could go blind, others do not have great performance and can transmit an image in real time that is cut off or there are delays, which will end with bad piloting. Therefore, I recommend choosing a good control system. If possible with FPV goggles to see as if you were inside the drone instead of using the controls by smartphones or screen controls...
    • El response time of the control system should be as low as possible, in order to have a much more immediate response when we are controlling it. A delay could end with a drone out of control for a few moments of time…
    • La video refresh rate for FPV it should be as high as possible. If the screen frames are not updated often enough, even if everything else is very fast, you will always get a somewhat outdated image.
    • In addition to the scope, it is recommended that WiFi connection technology more advanced and if possible in a 5 Ghz band that is less saturated than the 2.4 Ghz band. The 2.4 Ghz can go further when there are obstacles in the way, since the level of absorption of this type of frequencies is lower than in the higher frequencies, but outdoors where there are usually no obstacles and the video must be transmitted instantly, better to use IEEE 802.11ac standards with more speed and bandwidth (minimum 802.11n). I would also add the issue of integrated antennas, the more the better coverage…
  • The engines They are also very important, because if we do not have powerful motors that drive the drone quickly, it will be of little use to have the best control system, the others will end up beating us by speed. Although brushless motors are normal, you should not buy another type of motor that is not of this type.
  • Finally, the other critical factor is the weight and aerodynamics. If we have a drone with a high weight or poor aerodynamics that generates great drag or resistance to advance, powerful motors will not be able to help. For this reason, perhaps you should rethink making the drone as light as possible and do without large cameras, external supports (better to integrate the camera inside the fairing), and use materials that are as light as possible, such as carbon fiber.

Now let's see how can we create the drone...

Options to create the racing drone:

I have already commented that you can proceed in different ways. According to your possibilities or what you really need, you can do it in many ways.

Buy:

Racing drone kit

One of the most comfortable possibilities, but also less fun for makers, is buy your racing drone. But within this we can also differentiate between:

  • Buy a ready-made racing drone. This option would only be valid for those who already know how to fly a normal drone and are quite agile. I do not recommend a beginner buy a racing drone or they will end up crashing at the first opportunity due to the high speed they achieve. Again it leaves us with two possibilities:
    • RTF (Ready To Fly): a drone already prepared to fly, that is, fully complete and functional so that you can take it out of the box, calibrate it and start flying without further ado.
    • ARF (Almost Ready to Fly): almost ready to fly, they are chassis that come with almost everything and only need some assembly to customize some details to suit the pilot. This is best for the more experienced or handyman. Some good sets of this type could be:
      • XCSource Combo Kit
      • EMAX Nighthawk 280.
  • Buy a normal drone and prepare it: we can buy a normal drone, like those from Parrot, DJI, etc., and modify it ourselves to make it lighter and better for racing, although this would fall under the next section…

DIY:

DJI Phantom

Do it yourself buying the parts separately or modifying an existing drone with upgrades to get it ready for a race. In this case you can do the following:

  • make the drone from scratch or with the help of an ARF kit:
  • modify a drone to transform it into a racing drone is something quite different from making it from scratch or almost from scratch. Perhaps this is the most critical part, because we must be very sure of what we are doing so as not to turn a functional drone into a useless piece of junk. Some of the advice that I would give you taking into account the three points that I mentioned above are (let's remember):
    • Control system: if we have an expensive drone, we won't have too much of a problem in this sense other than looking for FPV glasses. But if the drone is not very far in this regard, perhaps we should look for somewhat better controls or systems to replace it. The problem in this sense is the compatibility of the circuitry of the drone itself if it is not modular, since it would not be compatible with third-party systems. That is why it is important to choose a good base, a good drone on which to build our racing drone.
    • Engines: maybe the motors that the drone has are already good, and possibly we should go to the next point to get more speed and agility, but in the case that they are not powerful motors, I recommend that you think about buying competition motors that must have a low weight, reliability, efficiency (measured in g/W, that is, the relationship between the weight of the motor and the power generated), motor torque and high RPM, as well as a brushless system instead of brushed ones. In order, the best engines would be:
    • Weight and aerodynamics: you should think of the drone almost like a motorsport car, like an F1:
      • lighten the drone removing everything that is not essential, such as supports (for cameras, support,...), decorations, etc. You can also replace the outer plastic and even the internal chassis with one made of a lighter material such as carbon fiber that you can find in stores like Amazon. The motors, if they are heavy and provide little power, you should also eliminate them and put in their place ones like the ones we have mentioned in the previous list.
      • Aerodynamics. I would remove any non-fairing obstacles such as external cameras and mounts like the ones found on the DJI Phantoms, among others, and opt to insert a small, lightweight camera centered inside the lightweight carbon fiber fairing. The arms that go to the motors of the quadcopters are another big problem, since they are usually thick and have a lot of resistance, the body of the drone is also thick. So you might think about adjusting the new fairing more so that it has a low profile with little drag to help the engines get more speed. Adding streamlined shapes will help, or you could take inspiration from nature, the shapes of the beaks and wings of the fastest birds. Remember that nature is wise. In F1 these types of tricks are often used...
      • Vehicle dynamics: Something that I have not commented on and that is also very important is that all the weights are well distributed in the drone. The circuitry and camera must be placed in an area as central and low as possible, in this way you lower the point of gravity of the drone and the distribution of weights will be better. If you have some parts on one side and others on the other, the differences in weight could cause the drone to lean more to one side than the other, which dynamite the handling.

I hope I have guided you and that this article can be helpful for this hobby...


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