The following piece is a guest post by FPV drone pilot BMac. Check out his YouTube Channel BMac FPV or his website FPV Drone Pro.

FPV drone racing is blazing a path to becoming the next big E-sport of the world.

While drone racing has been happening for years, some say drone racing became an official sport in 2016 when the Drone Racing League pitted the world’s best drone pilots against each other in high speed obstacle courses and hosted a Drone Nationals event. DRL recently received sponsorship from Allianz insurance to solidify a new 6 race series in major venues across the globe called “The Allianz World Championships.”

But before flying through extravagant obstacle courses, the people who are now professional drone racing pilots started out doing tricks and maneuvers in places they thought looked cool or offered challenging architecture.  This is the heart and soul of FPV Freestyle.

What is FPV Freestyle?

While drone racing simply involves completing an obstacle race course in the fastest possible time, FPV freestyle involves navigating tight corners, under trees, around obstacles and through small openings all while doing tricks. Pilots must do all that while having an understanding of their spatial positioning to avoid hitting the ground while doing a power loop or clip a race gate.

Below is a list of the suggested trick difficulties from the drone national championships official rules.  Each trick is awarded points based on difficulty.

Novice Tricks

Flip – Complete a 360 degree forward or backward flip

Roll – Complete a 360 degree left or right roll

Gap Pass – Pass through a large gap slowly

Intermediate Tricks

Multi Flip/Roll – back to back flips/rolls

Flip/Roll with Hesitation – Flip/Roll 180 degrees with a pause then complete the flip

Gap Pass Flip/Roll – Pass through a gap while performing a Flip or Roll

Power Loop – Complete a 360 degree loop in a circular motion

Inverted Hangtime – Flip upside down and fall for an extended duration

Expert Tricks

Knife-edge Flip – Drone vertical flip end over end like a cartwheel motion

Flip/Roll – though a tiny gap

Power loop – through small or tiny gap

Proximity Flip – Flipping close to or over an object while keeping it in camera view

Knife-edge proximity – Flipping over an object on a vertical axis

Intentional ground/obstacle skid with flip – Rail slide

Pilots to watch

Johnny FPV’s style evokes juicy dubstep song swiftly changing directions inward and outward up and down, as well as some amazing building dives on the Florida coast line.