 Hey guys, welcome to Rotorat and this is First Flight to Freestyle. We're doing some a little bit different today. We're going to be putting the DJI FPV drone through a race course. Now, I don't actually know a whole lot about racing, I really just focus on freestyle. So we brought in another guest instructor who knows a little bit more about doing race lines. Hi, I'm Mako Riatra. I'm a professional drone racer. I race in multi-GP as well as Drone Championship League, which is a global drone racing league. We're working with the American team and we're called Quad Force One. We're really lucky to have her here today so she can give Eric some racing tips. You've been doing great in the students so far though. I've been having a lot of fun. Honestly, chasing drift cars is my favorite thing so far. That was a hoot. But this challenge today, I'm so glad she's here because I know next to nothing about any sort of quad racing. Now, we've hosted quad races here at the Chalet in the past and enjoyed watching them crash and slip and burn and literally fires. That's really cool and I expect to do at least that today. So guys, the whole reason that we're doing a racing episode in this freestyle series is because I think getting some racing fundamentals down is an amazing set of skills that really feeds into having good freestyle lines and good cinematic lines. So far in this series, we taught Eric some moves where he could do them wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He could do a flip. He could do a split. That's kind of on his own time and really learn to fly this drone very dynamically. But the thing with getting through a race course is you have to do a set list of moves in a set order and you kind of want to do it with some speed. Now, we're not really going to be pushing it for laptops, but what I'm getting at is today is all about... You're going down. You're going down. You want to throw it out. Today is going to be all about consistency, having you do the same moves, learning to pick a line, practice that line, stick to that line, and also forcing you to be real low to the ground. These are not tall gates here. I'm excited to try this out and see if I can have some fun. Yeah, we got a great course here today put together by our very own Sean Morrison. So let's take a look at what we're going to be flying through. So this is our start platform. This makes a piece of concrete right here. Should be easy to start off on. There's your first gate and then we're going to turn and go straight that way into that gate right there. For the center gate? Okay. The first gate you're lined up with. Once you get up to that point, you can corkscrew is what they would call it into this gate. But if you're not familiar, if you're not comfortable with corkscrewing, you could just come through this gate and go up, turn right, and then turn left and go through this gate. So you don't necessarily have to do it as a corkscrew. But that's the objective to get the most speed drop in and drop through and add power. It's kind of like a power loop. But you're turning it into a sideways power. Yeah. All right. But you don't have to do it that way. And most people don't at first. Like even when I flew it the first time I flew it, I didn't do it as a corkscrew. It took me a couple tries to get in the habit of doing it. And then once you get the habit of it, it just makes the course go faster if you can do it in that speed. Well, with that said, though, all the people in the comments first off love you guys. They like it when I crash. We're going to try corkscrew. There you go. We're going to corkscrew again into the third gate, which is going to line you up. It's going to line you up to that gate right there. Straight and then left, left, left, left, left. Yeah. They need to keep going left until you're done. Okay. We'll be here to start gate. And what you've been telling me off camera, Mako, which is basically consistency is key. Try to keep it smooth. Don't land it like that. Yeah. Smooth is fast, especially your first rounds. You want to, or your practice rounds, you want to take it easy, learn the course. The corkscrew is a really fun element. Or not. So start back maybe at the beginning of the corkscrew. Yeah. And stay to like the right side if you can. There you go. And then over. Yeah. Oh. Oh. It was back up. Whoa. Right back up. Oh. Nice. No turtling. I'm going to use a little more power than I think I need to. Yeah. More throttle. It's a little, oh, there you go. Up over. Hey. Over. I think you're trying to do it like somebody who's done it a lot already, so you can just. But it's that movement though, right? Yeah. It's like, it's this movement here. So in. You know the movement. So yeah. So that's, that's almost a split S, right? I think you're really just going a little too hard, maybe, maybe you could demonstrate like a safe line. Yeah. Like demonstrating it would be helpful. Just take everything way wider, way, way more conservatively. Yeah. It's kind of like, okay, now you're turning around, go over and then turn around again. There you go. See? Yeah. She's a nice and conservative. That's a conservative. You are racer. You're crashing. Yeah. It wasn't even a hard crash. You're all right. And the corkscrew is not a beginner element. It's definitely a more intermediate advanced element. Evan Turner once said, don't think of a gate as a gate, think of it as a flag. I think he said this recently. So you're only really trying to get around that one side of the gate. So just think of that side as the flag. Don't look at the whole gate. Gotcha. So instead of trying to go through the gate and hit the center and be perfectly smooth, come up to the side, try to get around it like a flag. I can get behind that. All right. After all the flying I've done, all the big stuff, like having a gate the size of Texas, now pushing it into something where I have to be close to the ground and I'm trying to maneuver between different points of gates. This I can see where this would make you a good pilot so much faster. Like everything we've done in this series, I've been telling you guys, like having Drew or Bobby in my ear kind of just saying, hey, this is how you do it and go do it now or else has been huge. Now taking those experiences and layering it with you into the, okay, put it through the paces. So what we're going to do now is I'm going to ask you to please file on for me. And then I'll follow along and try to get a better idea of how you're using power because I feel like I'm just saving myself. That's all I'm doing. Maybe flying at a higher camera angle would help you. I mean, you're flying at a really low. Yeah, so he's flying at like 20 degrees. What are you going to set yours to? Racers, typically 545 to 50, okay. So you can turn around and just turn at a, ready, over and just turn. See how I'm doing that? I was trying not to do that because I didn't want to have the prop wash and the fact that the quads moving backwards. I felt like trying to get a tighter line was more important. Like you can see now why you're doing it. So you can just turn. Well, the better you get exactly what you want to do is what you'll want to work your way up to. And you could do something like that. Did you see what I do on that last one? Yeah. I went around it. So. Meg, why don't you just do a bunch of rounds on the corkscrew? So you can go around like this. Because that seems to be the most challenging one. So you can start with the really conservative line and slowly work your way to the aggressive line. So you can see, so you can see how you, how you would go over it and then turn. Come back to the beginning. So I'm just using some roll here to, so there's a little ramp. See it's a little bit tighter, but still I'd say pretty conservative for her. And see, I was trying to make it flowier, more freestyle. Yeah. I mean, that's what you want. Like see. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's getting good. All right. Do your best one. Do your best one. It's hard to drown. I'm not used to flying, but. I mean, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That was just all. It seemed like it was almost all one movement. Yeah. And that's what you want, right? Yep. You pretty much hold. Look at that. That yaw and roll. It's just disgusting. It's so interesting because everything Drew's taught me so far is like avoid the sound of the props going through the prop wash. Try to keep it smooth. Yeah. And this is like, nope. Just shab through it. Yeah. Racers, well, you care about your tune to an extent, but you'll, you know, you'll let things go a little bit more because it's, you're not really, the footage isn't important to you as much, you know. It's just a mindset, you know, you start being more focused on being consistent. And learning how to be able to do the line over and over again and then going back and trying to be smooth and stay out of the prop wash. You see how I'm kind of looking at the right, the right side is my flag. I'm really just trying to get around that right side of that gate. Right. So much different. Yeah. I think maybe upping it would help. Upping yours. I think I'm going to try the 45. Look at that. Oh, no. The beginning makes sense. Did you see the difference? It does. So you're, I was trying to basically take it up and almost like split us over the top and keep it flowy. And with the camera angle I was at, I think you just, you can't. I don't think it's possible. Yeah. So I think what I need to do is take it and think of it more as a rotational versus a loop. Because I always basically turn a power loop up, let it drop down and just fly through it beautifully. That doesn't work. So different strokes, different goals, different plans. We'll try this out. See how it goes. Got to use that power more. There you go. Don't, there you go. All right. So do, should I actually turn a little sooner? And even slow down because a lot of common areas kind of going too fast. And then you'll overshoot a gate. So even just slowing down. Let me turtle mode it. Whoa. Wow. It's so cool. It works so well. That's really cool. Mine, you know, sometimes it'll flip twice. Nice. Now turn over. Have you thought about turning right instead of left after you go over it to go back through it? See if that helps a little bit. So go through. And then turn left if you're going to go this direction. Oh, that was a hard hit. Yeah. That one might be damaged. That one broke it. Look at what you did. Well, at least we have easy access to the SD card. The SD card is good. So we got the SD card. We got the battery. All right. Let's get another drone. I would say just the goal for today is just like practice consistency. And if you could at one point do one lap without a stutter or whatever. Yeah. That's what I'd call your victory. Yeah. Being able to do one lap of the because because we pre-planned. And that's what's going to happen. I mean, this is how it feeds back into like what we've been learning. Like if you're going to do a shot for a director, the director is going to tell you you need to fly here, then here, then here. It's not your choice. So it's very similar. This course was set for you. You didn't get to choose it. I had nothing to do with it. Your goal is to make it through this course in one clean lap. It doesn't have to be the fastest lap. It has to be clean lap. Just have to not crash. Yeah. Yeah. You want to hit this one. Don't say hit. Four choice of words. Don't say hit. What are you doing? And then this is nice curve. Nice. Nice save. Real low. Yep. Still seemed in control. Try to turn a little bit earlier. There you go. Yeah. You didn't overshoot that one as much. You can kind of do something called pre-turning and almost turn when you're before the gate or even inside of it maybe. Now we're making laps. Beautiful turn. That was beautiful, Eric. There you go. And you're flying this differently. You're not trying to do it like the car loop style. Yes. So you're... Yeah. That was awesome. Super smooth. That was... You're really looking good out there. This one sweeper turn. But this one... You just flew a long time without crashing. That's the bar. That is the bar for doing a course like this where you can't just do what you feel like doing. You have to do what we told you to do. I'm very impressed. Especially some of these turns I was seeing where I could see the profile of the drone. It was like a perfect coordinated turn. There was a washout. You had lots of grip in the air. That was looking great. So I have a lot of experience if you guys have been watching this series for a while. I've raced cars. I've raced motorcycles. I've flown airplanes. I've flown paramotors. I've flown everything, right? And I've done things that push me to another level every time I'm always... I've never really been a competitive person to race other people, but I like pushing myself. Me too. So this is definitely a push. Especially because it's completely different than flying freestyle. Freestyle I'd be out here just kind of floaty. I level it and just look at the hang time. This is like... Okay. And at one point I realized I'm looking over here and I'm like, why is my head cocked left? I don't know. I'm intense, right? Yeah. You end up like this or like this. That's why you don't stand. All the things that you're learning today are going to feed into those freestyle skills because then when you have a freestyle line in mind, you're like, okay, I want to float over this and then power loop that. Getting that... Being able to do that same thing consistently and having a little bit of forethought and sticking to a plan, it's going to be so much easier because you're having to stick to this very difficult plan. Yeah. You'll have more command over your drone. We'll have new pilots come to our races and a lot of them can't even put in the lap in. They'll skip gates. I mean, I had to go back for a couple of gates, but I got them all. It definitely is a different experience. I'm glad that I got this chance and thank you for helping me. Mako, thank you for coming out and giving him some lessons. Thanks for having me anytime. Yeah, it was super fun. It was a really impressive scene. You go through the course and being able to show everything from my conservative line to an aggressive line. Hell, even just watching anyone fly at that high up tilt always impresses me because I'm just chilling out at, you know, 20, 30 degrees. So you're ripping at 50. It's pretty awesome. A whole different game. I mean, you tilt that thing up, even just the takeoff. It's just like, I'm looking at the sky. Yeah. This has been a really fun series. So, link in the description to the full playlist so you can watch Eric's full journey. And guys, every Monday, you can check us out right here on the Road to Riot channel. I don't think they're going to be able to get rid of me at this point because I love all the adventures, all the crazy stuff. Make sure you hit the notification bell when you click subscribe and check out our channel, Aveda Paramotor. Yeah, if you can't get enough of Eric, he's got a whole channel where he's flying. Paramotors, airplanes, flying, all the things, of course. Every Friday. Every Friday, new channel, new updates, new videos, and guys, this has been fun. Let's go break some more drugs. We'll see you guys next time. See ya. Bye.