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The day has arrived for BTW – International Race Day 2022

We just about snuck in the first ever BIRD in 2020 before Covid hit, so after being pandemic-ed off for a year we are finally back with a bang in 2022!!!

This year BIRD is hosted at BOM, an amazing science and art exhibition and design space in the heart of Birmingham. They have been super supportive and generous with their time and resource to help make this event special.

We had to wait till the exhibition space was closed for the day before we could start setting up. This meant being super organised and having everyone ready to go with a plan of where each item needed to be. All the gates and equipment had been dropped off earlier in the day so we could get going as soon as we were allowed. There were a few technical challenges like getting power to all the gates and PA equipment and lights that needed them. But we actually managed to set up and get flying within 1 hour 30 mins, which was only a little behind schedule and something Im very proud of for such a complex event.

We had a pilots lounge set up with lots of tables, power cables and chairs. Reynolds bought along his 4 way video receiver and projector and cast it up large on the wall so everyone could see the racing. The lounge was up and away from the cafe and the racing which was good to allow a quieter space to get kit ready, but meant the cafe and race area was empty for some time. This was a quirk of the venue space we had use of.

The venue itself was super interesting to fly. Split over 2 levels, with a balcony mezzanine, I was adamant we would use both levels. I wanted to take advantage of the huge atrium height to add dimension to the track where most clubs just have gates standing on the floor. This made for a very interesting flying style as there were some very fast a flowing bits leading to some technical and tricky sections that caught some people out. One of the trickiest parts was flying along the balcony railing towards a wall and then popping up and thru a gate on top in a very sharp manoeuvre. If you didn’t have good control of your whoop this bit proved challenging.

The sponsors really pushed the boat out and gave the event a lot of support. Both Beta FPV and Drone Junkie supplied gates which we set up in a quad arrangement with bright lights to illuminate them. They looked incredible in the goggles and to watch as the whoops span in and out of them. The BetaFPV gates also had awesome scrolling LED lights threaded into the centre which I was worried would catch whoops like a flytrap, but no one got hung up on them which was good. The batteries were not designed to last the whole night, so I had a power source for them. With this, they worked perfectly and looked amazing!

I made a big deal about this event being about the visual extravaganza and party for the community. Its a hobby what is not as serious at the 5 inch drones that go racing on which people spend vast sums of money. You CAN spend a lot on a whoop setup, but just a starter bundle like BetaFPV Cetus range is relatively competitive. You may not be the fastest or lightest (altho you will be close) your race position will depend more on your skill as a pilot and luck on the track. I mean, its not every day races where you’ll have a giraffe flip you right side up after a crash, or a helpful scooby doo scoop you out of a tricky spot!

Being less serious, BIRD2022 encouraged dressing up in onesies with a bonus second off your qualifying times. This meant that not only was the event a whole lot more fun, but if anyone got grumpy and started mouthing off, everyone would just laugh at the angry smurf getting in a flap about something that is not meant to be taken seriously. Of course, the racers are alway looking to prove who is fastest and I knew that they wouldn’t be able to resist an easy 1 second off their times which meant pretty much everyone turned up in dress up! I wish I had had the foresight to arrange a mass photo of us all in costume, but organising a race is just so busy, it slipped my mind.

The other incentive that was offered was to include LED’s on the frame of your whoop. This is to make them easier to see flying around a dark room. It meant photos would get light streaks in them and knowing who landed in what position was easier. Again, racers were not about to give up a whole second off their qualifying times so about 90% of the whoops had some sort of LED lights installed. It made watching them zipping around a whole lot more fun. Martian McFly even went so far as to use them as an advantage – his were so bright that anyone following him would have a sunburst effect in their goggles! Not sure it worked but it was another interesting dynamic to the event. My hope is that now they are installed, the LEDs will remain on the frames and be seen more at future events.

LED’s are critical to the events – they illuminate the gates and make it so much more special to fly thru. Its literally like designing your own computer game like TRON and zooming around all the colours! They make the video recorded from the onboard cameras amazing so we tried to use as many as possible. One of the new features this year was a Hype-Gate. This was made from 2 sheets of plastic roofing wrapped into a tunnel and screwed to a wooden frame. It used lengths of programmable LEDs so a scrolling effect could make it look like the tunnel shot the whoops into hyperspace!!! It was a big success, hung between 2 doorways to allow passage beneath to the toilets at the venue. It meant safe access to the toilets so no one got hit in the head by a whoop and it just looked awesome! 

The other interesting feature that was a little more controversial was the moving gate. This was a pair of gates hung at each end of a baton of wood, that slowly rotated under a mirror-ball motor. It worked perfectly (for something that was untested) and rotated at exactly the right speed between slow enough to fly thru, but fast enough that you needed to chase it a little to be interesting. Again this was in the pursuit of interest and fun because any racer can build muscle memory around a track, but this would always be different when you arrive there forcing new flight lines each time.

The racing itself was amazing! Jaggers brought along his LapRF timing system which I operated from my phone. I used this with its stand alone timing app and a spreadsheet to record the times. It worked fine, but not very professional and a lot of time to copy out the times from qualifying. It did allow me the flexibility to adjust the times recorded if there was a hardware error and include the bonuses for pilots wearing a Onesie and sporting LEDs on their quads which was useful.

As expected, the top racers took a few laps in practice to get their eye in and then they were very competitive. I wanted the track to be about 45 seconds long for slow-intermediate pilots so they would get at least 2-3 laps before batteries were toast. Indeed during practice, by sheer luck, the laps were about 40-60 seconds but soon dropped to the mid 30’s as people got their eye in.

During the qualifying sessions the best times dropped even further. 30 seconds to get around seemed to be easy now people knew the track and the best time of the night was 23.2 seconds!!!!

Once qualifying times were posted, we had our lineup for the final race. It was going to be a spectacular final with all pilots battling for the prestige of being first in their group. I was lucky enough to scrape into the Group B finals and after a frantic race, where I lost video in the stairwell, I made 7th position overall. The Group A final race was intense. These chaps were top of their game and absolutely shredding it around the track. Martian McFly unfortunately didn’t get off the grid on the buzzer so lost 5-10 seconds sorting his quad arming out before pulling away. There was no coming back from that, one of the unlucky parts of racing. Carpy was outta there, he was just gone leaving everyone to eat his prop wash. Smooth and fast, he easily took First. But the battle for 2nd was between AntiHype and Carb. After a quick takeoff AntiHype was leading the pack and there looked like nothing could stop him. Only a few bobbles allowed carb to keep up until a bit too much power put Antihype just to high for the tunnel gate and he hit the wall. This crash sent him cartwheeling down the stairwell to where no video could escape. After a rescue from a helpful track marshal, he was back up and flying and would have lost 2nd place, but for Carb forgetting to crash gate and going for another lap. This just allowed Antihype to keep 2nd place

Lots of organisation has gone into getting today ready to make it as good as it can possibly be. 

• Gates, LEDs and track features provided by Jaggers and Reynolds
• Venue, food and drink hosted, cooked and supplied by BOM
• Prizes graciously donated and subsidised by Beta FPV and Drone Junkie
• Lights and sound system provided by my brother
• Video display and broadcast of the event by AntiHype
• And of course, help setting up and transporting everything from around the UK by all of the above.

The help and support from the whole community was amazing and made the event super special so thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your involvement and effort!