2016 PNW Drone Nationals Qualifier

Whew what a weekend. Flew up to Bend, Oregon for the Pacific North West Drone Nationals Qualifier. Flew up after work Friday and was home by 9:00AM on Sunday morning. Sadly I didn’t get to spend too much time in Bend other than attending the race. The race was a mixed bag. While I tied for 3rd after Qualifying I ended up taking 5th due to a mid-air in the final race right at the start. I did finally qualify for Drone Nationals though!!! BUT I will not be attending it as I have conflicts and cannot make it. Thankfully we were able to pass the “golden ticket” onto the next person in line so at least he can now go!

The big thing was the race format was very interesting, at least I had never seen anything like that before. We were given one practice round and then three qualifying rounds. If you qualified well you continued on, if you didn’t you were done. Now the people that qualified 1-5 had a race. The person that won that race moved onto the “finals” and were given the “golden ticket”. The person that qualified #6 would then enter the race against the remainder of the people from 1-5 taking the place of the other person. So on and so forth until all the “tickets” were given out. Because FlyingBearFPV (Ken) was already qualified and the fact I gave up my ticket, they ended up having 7 of these races to find who got those last two spots. This “format” really favors the people that qualify well.

Leave a Reply