I fly racing drones for a living and i chased some driftcars this weekend. It looks like a videogame

This weekend, 100 pilots will gather in front of the skyline of Manhattan for a race that will go faster than 60 mph. During the 2016 U.S. National Drone Racing Championships, these pilots will not be flying any planes.

For the first time, they will also be shown live on a national TV show. The race will be shown on ESPN3 on Saturday and Sunday at 1 p.m. At 8:00 a.m. Eastern time, America’s biggest sports network will show the sport for the first time. The drone race was shown live on DIS, -2.16%, which is owned by Disney. ESPN is a big deal for fans, organisers, and people who like drone racing.

The self-driving Nascar of the sky

In the last three years, drone racing leagues have popped up all over the country, and more have just started up. Small events are put on by hundreds of small or local leagues. Then there are the competitors, like the International Drone Racing Association, Drone Racing League, and Drone Sports Association, which are all trying to become the Nascar of flying robots. No single league has come out on top among these bigger players. Some leagues have gotten big investments, while others are leading in big sponsorship or TV deals. In January, the Drone Racing League said that it had raised more than $8 million in funding. 

Even though sponsors are interested, will drone racing ever be able to make money?

Piloting a drone racer for the first time isn’t always fun; in fact, there are times when it can be downright nauseating. First-person view, or FPV, goggles are used in drone racing because they let the pilot see what the camera on the drone sees as it flies through the air. At 60 miles per hour, the drone is flying, which is a good way to get sick. On the other hand, the best racers in the world say that the sickness goes away quickly with practice and is replaced by happiness.

From the most strange to the most common

Drone technology has grown about as fast as the sport itself has exploded in popularity. Before recently, drone racers had to know how to fix things. Because you couldn’t buy a racing drone at your local electronics store, they were always made to order, often by the pilots themselves. Paik said that people who wanted to fly but didn’t want to use a soldering iron couldn’t take part in drone racing. All of that changed when Horizon Hobby made the Blade Nano QX, a cheap, ready-to-fly racing drone, two years ago. Horizon Hobby makes the Blade Nano QX2, a more modern model, right now. 

It’s cool to be a nerd.

Drone racing is a niche hobby right now, but it seems to be growing in popularity. AirVuz is one of the best-known websites where racers post videos. In July, it had 800,000 viewers, which is four times more than in June and almost twenty times more than in May, according to CEO Mike Israel. But some people worry that drone racing will always be a sport for a small group of people. Barati said that drone racing had only been a sport for a year. “Something that different should make people wonder,”