Written By Kevin Hawks
Have you ever wondered how we ended up at the point where we can slip on a pair of goggles, fire up a Quad, and fly through the sky doing tricks from a bird’s perspective? It’s pretty amazing, especially considering how tiny everything on a drone is nowadays. Sixty years ago, that kind of technology would require a 10-foot wingspan aircraft to hold all of the technology needed to receive radio signals while also controlling the aircraft – not to mention the camera and video transmitter to send video back to the pilot. So, depending on who you ask, you’ll likely get several different answers to that question.
The first R/C vehicle can be traced back to Tesla, not Elon Musk’s Tesla, Nikola Tesla, the father of modern alternating current (A/C) electricity. Tesla demonstrated a boat moving seemingly as if by magic (some people thought it was a tiny monkey driving it – not kidding) and blew away the minds of the people of New York back in 1898. While modern Quad technology wouldn’t exist without the creation of radio waves to control an electronic vehicle, a short-range electric boat is a far cry from fast-moving FPV Race drones or long-range drones with 4k cameras. Maybe the military created them, then?
Sort of. R/C aircraft continued to evolve over the next 100 years, with the first R/C aircraft popping up during World War 1 as a British experimental aircraft known as the “Aerial Target.” Ironically, the R/C aircraft wasn’t used for target practice; its true mission was to fly explosive charges into enemy positions – a great idea if the Ariel Target didn’t keep crashing and was eventually retired. The first quadcopter, the Omnichen No.2 (the first one couldn’t generate enough lift), was invented only three years later, in 1920, in France as a viable alternative to the helicopter, which had its own set of issues in the early 1900s. The Royal Air Force was at it again in 1935 before WWII as they developed (and successfully flew this time) the de Havilland DH82B “Queen Bee”, an Air-to-Air gunnery training dummy designed to be shot down, recovered, and flown again. This aircraft is where the term “drone” originated from since the sound the aptly named Queen Bee made sounded like a bee’s buzzing or droning. Lastly, the first successful R/C model plane, the “Big Guff,” was built by two scientists/brothers, Bill, and Walt Good, in 1938. However, some far less successful model planes were “flown” (crashed) the year prior – though we do have to give Chester Lanzo credit for being able to fly his aircraft erratically during the competition in 1937. So yes, the military, and some very enterprising inventors, spent quite a bit of time developing transmitters, motors, receivers, and the technology needed for modern systems. Still, we’re not even close to an FPV vehicle yet – heck, the Television wasn’t produced and released commercially in the United States until the year “Big Guff” flew.
The R/C competitions were put on hold until after World War II, and the subsequent significant development in FPV was created in 1944 by the relatively new United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). Their idea was to take shot-up B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft and turn them into the radio-controlled BQ-7 “Aphrodite” flying bomb (similar to the Queen Bee, but MUCH bigger). How does this sound for the worst job description ever: Take off in a broken B-17 with no cockpit modified with 20,000 lbs. of explosives and an impact fuse – fly it to cruising altitude, point the aircraft towards the target, activate the remote control and the fuse – and then jump out and parachute to the ground with your engineer buddy in the back seat. Was that job a punishment for the pilots that got in bar fights or punched an officer? Anyway, once on its way, the BQ-7 was flown remotely by ANOTHER B-17 and a fighter on its way to its target (the fighter’s job was to shoot down the BQ-7 in case the B-17 lost control of it). Then, the plane’s controls would be locked in a dive, and the B-17 and fighter would run away while the BQ-7 turned into a bomb instead of an airplane. This fascinating aircraft matters, though: after the first couple of launches, they added TV cameras to the cockpit and one to the nose to watch the ground. That video feed was sent to the controlling B-17, allowing it to leave sooner and blow things up better. That’s right, the first FPV aircraft had a 103 ft wingspan, was 74 ft long, and weighed around 63,000 lbs. Unfortunately, this aircraft was basically a complete failure, occasionally blew up on British soil, and had terrible video quality, accuracy, and controllability – basically, the same issues the R/C hobby guys were having before the war.
So where was the Quadcopter in all of this? We know that the first operational quadcopter was created in 1920, so why weren’t Quadcopters flown in WWII? Helicopters were being flown in the military throughout WWII on both sides because the rear rotor and the top rotor shared combined gearing, making them relatively simple to build and fly. Quadcopters required all four motors to run at the same speeds to maintain stability and most versions required motors to run at different speeds to change direction – a much more difficult feat of engineering than a helicopter, especially without modern Flight Controllers to manage each motor. In 1956, quite a while after WWII, a US company called Convertawings built and flew the Model A (super creative name, I know). This Model A combined the four rotors into sets of two with variable pitch adjustments, making it much easier to control and fly – essentially the first commercially viable quadcopter design and a very similar design to what we see with modern Quads. Oh, and it was more fuel efficient and stable than a Helo, even though the helicopter continues its dominance to this day while the Quad is just barely resurfacing in commercial use. Why? Cutbacks to defense spending, of course – WWII was over, and jet-engine powered aircraft and the already developed helicopters were more appealing than developing a brand-new technology that still had its own set of issues.
Where does that leave us, then? We’ve seen video transmitters used, and it was terrible, and we’ve seen R/C controls used, but they were pretty bad also. Hobbyists are starting to get the hang of R/C planes, but only in small numbers, and the next two major wars (Korea and Vietnam) involved mostly jet-powered aircraft and helicopters as the backbone of the air forces. Propeller aircraft and Quadcopters look far less appealing to the military at this point. There was a bit of a shortage from the 1960s to the 1990s as far as FPV and quadcopters go. However, the R/C prop plane hobby took off in popularity with multiple companies building and releasing kits to the public – it’s the boost the hobby needed to become mainstream (heck, my dad had an R/C plane he never let me fly that sat in the basement my entire childhood for some reason). So, from the 60s to the 90s, R/C aircraft and cars saw a massive boost, and the whole-time transmitters and motors were becoming smaller and more powerful while receivers were becoming smaller and more capable. Electronics improved, batteries improved, and a shift started to happen from gas-powered to electronic-powered vehicles on the hobby side.
The first example of an FPV aircraft on the hobby side that I could find was an ex-engineer from Boeing named Carl Berry, who flew his “Project Cyclops” aircraft first in 1989 as a proof of concept, but then really ramped up his flights from 1993 to 1994 using an arcade cabinet built to look like the inside of an airplane. Coolest simulator ever? As mentioned in my intro, this aircraft had a 10 ft wingspan and used security camera technology to fly. All this tech in the late 80s/early 90s was massive, heavy, bulky, and inefficient. Still, he was the first hobbyist to pull it off, and this was the first attempt at FPV since the BQ-7 around 45 years prior – and it worked, which was a feat in itself.
the mid-2000s, hobbyists put everything from security cameras to baby monitors on their aircraft to give them a plane’s-eye view while flying – a much more exciting experience than Line-of-Sight (LoS) offered. The internet age began to bring hobbyists together, and the advent of YouTube in 2005 saw a massive increase in people sharing videos of their FPV aircraft. A little company called DJI (founded by Frank Wang from Hong Kong) even popped on the scene in 2006 when they got the first commercial drone permit approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Realistically though, the mid-2010s are when the first FPV quadcopters started popping on the scene. Tim Nilson began GetFPV.com and Lumenier all the way back in 2012, which brought an easy place for people to shop for drones to the internet. 2013 saw the advent of the DJI Phantom, which was the catalyst for the modern drone hobby. Joshua Bardwell and Mr. Steele began to post videos of their drones flying online as early as 2015.
2014 saw the first drone race flown in Australia, and in 2015, Chris Thomas and Nicholas Horbaczewski founded two separate race leagues for drones, the MultiGP and The Drone Racing League, respectively. Both racing leagues are still around, though COVID hit them pretty hard – they are slowly picking back up where they left off in 2019. Less sanctioned leagues have also started in the last couple of years, like Street League Spec Drone Racing. Drone racing typically uses lower-quality analog feeds for their FPV to decrease latency time, though digital systems are quickly catching up.
2015 also saw the release of the Phantom 3, which allowed FPV feed to your smartphone. DJI continued to push the technology envelope, releasing the first foldable drone, the Mavic Pro, in 2016 and the Mavic Mini in 2019 due to the new regulation requiring registration for any drone over 250 grams. Whether you’re using drones for photography, racing, or just running tricks with freestyle, the last 130 years have seen a massive increase in the technology enabling you to go outside, hook up a portable radio and video receiver goggles to a tiny little drone the size of your palm and fly with the freedom only birds have enjoyed up to this point. That’s a lot of advancement in the last 130 years – who knows what the next 130 years will bring. Keep flying!
