The Adrenaline Rush of Racing Drones

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Storytelling, New, Society & Culture, Yorker, Wnyc, Books, Remnick, Politics, Arts, David

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2022

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ian Frazier, who has chronicled American life for The New Yorker for more than forty years, travelled to a house in Fort Collins, Colorado, where three roommates build, fly, and race drones. Jordan Temkin, Zachry Thayer, and Travis McIntyre were among the early professional drone racers in the sport, piloting the tiny devices through complex courses at upward of eighty miles an hour. Drones have had an enormous impact on military strategy, and the commercial applications seem limitless, but to these pilots drones exist in the strange overlap between pure adrenaline and big money that defines pro sports. This piece originally aired on February 9, 2018.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:08.6	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:12.3	All over the country this week, from Connecticut to Florida to Washington, qualifying races are being held for a competition in a sport that you may not have heard a lot about.
0:23.6	Dron racing.
0:25.1	The qualifiers continue through mid-July for the multi-GP championship later this year.
0:31.4	So drone racing, what exactly is drone racing?
0:35.2	Let's be clear, these aren't the drones you can buy your kid on Amazon,
0:38.9	nor are they the military drones you may have read about that are flying over Ukraine.
0:44.0	Racing drones are a specialty item, custom built for that purpose alone. At least one drone
0:50.3	was clocked at 180 miles an hour. I first heard about all this from staff writer Ian Frazier, who reported for us on drone
0:58.3	racing in the sports early days, starting in an event billed as the drone national championships
1:04.2	in 2016.
1:06.6	Multi-ruder racing, the 2016 U.S. drone Nationals. Thank you to all of our local group and national partners
1:13.6	and we'll get to in just a little bit as we make history.
1:15.6	It was one of those things that happened early on in the development of a sport, I guess,
1:22.6	in that it was not really very well thought out.
1:24.6	Pilots goggles down.
1:26.6	Arm your copters.
1:29.3	We're on the tone in less than five.
1:37.3	You couldn't really tell who was in first and who was in second,
1:40.3	because drones are small and drones can go really fast.
1:45.0	80 miles an hour is a kind of regular speed.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.