=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 471 ===
Title: LDO 471 - Cerberus Talks BDRA
Recorded: 2024-09-05
Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Andrew "Frank" Hyams, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash
Guest(s): Cerberus "Cerb" Velvet
Total audience: 977
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNkLmGf828); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1911301076-letsdroneout-ldo-471-cerberus-talks-bdra.mp3)
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https://bdra.uk/

#LetsDroneOut #FPV #FPVPodcast #BDRA #CerberusVelvet

[0.0] Jack: Hello and you're listening to Let's Drone Out and special thank you to our lovely patrons that helped donate so that we could pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things we say. Massive thank you too.
[14.0] Jack: Carlos Campos.
[16.0] Jack: Art Faulkner.
[18.0] Jack: Sam Dahmer.
[19.0] Stephen: On with the show.
[21.0] Cerb: Let's Drone Out now.
[23.0] Stephen: Hello and welcome to Let's Drone Out episode 471.
[56.45] Stephen: On Thursday, the 5th of September, 2024, you are joined by the master controller, Frank himself.
[66.45] Frank: Control feels a distant concept. Yes. Hello.
[71.45] Stephen: You have been given control because you are enabled by Let's Drone Out. We grant you the right to control.
[78.45] Frank: I've turned up and therefore by default have control.
[82.45] Stephen: You are the most responsible person in the building and therefore the right is yours.
[86.45] Stephen: Yes, absolutely.
[88.45] Stephen: Myself, Stephen. Hello. Good evening.
[91.45] Stephen: And I guess this evening is Cerberus representing the racing community and FBV Racing Solutions. Hello, Cerberus.
[99.45] Frank: Hello, everybody.
[100.45] Frank: For the past years, I believe, just coming up for you, right, Cerberus has been the chairman of the BDRA, the British Drone Racing Association.
[109.45] Frank: Yes.
[110.45] Frank: And it feels a very quick year from my perspective. I imagine it must be even quicker for you.
[118.45] Cerb: Depending on the amount of paperwork involved.
[122.45] Cerb: Depending on the amount of pain involved, yes, in some aspects.
[126.45] Cerb: Some aspects are far too quick because I haven't really gotten done what I wanted to get done.
[135.45] Cerb: But for a volunteer organization, that's pretty standard in terms of getting done what we did get done quite a long year.
[145.45] Cerb: And in terms of it being incredibly hard work, yeah, a very, very long year and an emotional and a draining and a taxing year, if I'm honest.
[158.45] Cerb: Yeah, so I had I was on the BDRA committee two years ago as a technical adviser, so not a committee role.
[167.45] Cerb: And I kind of didn't really see the direction as being something that worked for me.
[174.45] Cerb: So I went off and thought, well, I'm just going to go off and I'm going to do my own thing.
[178.45] Cerb: I'm going to do what I do, do that well and just go off and be me.
[184.45] Cerb: And that gave me the chance to do a five race series with killer quads.
[188.45] Cerb: And all of my guys at killer quads were all behind me and helped me.
[191.45] Cerb: And, you know, I claim all the credit for it, but it's very much a community based thing, right?
[197.45] Cerb: You know, there's there's people there supporting you.
[199.45] Cerb: There's people that believe and everybody gets stuck in.
[202.45] Cerb: So at the end of that year, the BDRA committee had two people step down and I didn't really think much of it.
[212.45] Cerb: And the the remaining members of the committee contacted me on like the 11th hour of applications closing and said,
[221.45] Cerb: so would you come come on back onto the committee?
[224.45] Cerb: And I said, to be honest, the only way I would come back onto that committee would be if I was back on as the chairman and I had the support of the committee and a mandate for change.
[235.45] Cerb: And the answer was, well, yeah, that's kind of what we had in mind.
[239.45] Cerb: You weren't at that meeting.
[243.45] Cerb: And I'm like, damn it, I've talked myself into that one.
[246.45] Cerb: And so I took it on.
[248.45] Cerb: I went through the election, was voted in and became chairman and took it from there, really.
[256.45] Cerb: And it's been an amazing year.
[258.45] Cerb: We've achieved a heck of a lot, a heck of a lot.
[261.45] Cerb: I mean, I came into the committee just to talk finances.
[266.45] Cerb: I when I came into the committee, they had one thousand seven hundred pounds in the bank.
[272.45] Cerb: And when you're looking down the barrel of going to Weston Park, you know, and they want three grand just to give you a patch of grass and you've got a membership of potentially, I think there was about 60 or something at that time, 10 pounds ahead.
[289.45] Cerb: The math ain't.
[294.45] Stephen: So one number is bigger than another number.
[297.45] Stephen: How did you meet those challenges then?
[299.45] Cerb: Well, I have I believe in relationships, right?
[304.45] Cerb: I believe in one of the things I said about being chairman was that I wanted to talk to everybody.
[309.45] Cerb: I wanted everybody's opinion.
[311.45] Cerb: It started with the pilots.
[313.45] Cerb: But as well as that, I was already working on relationships from killer quads and the five race series.
[319.45] Cerb: My sponsors, HD zero.
[321.45] Cerb: Carl, love you to bits, man.
[323.45] Cerb: Gem fan who looked after us with that.
[326.45] Cerb: So I had those relationships, but also a very good relationship with the digital television group.
[333.45] Cerb: Alex Buchanan, who is amazing and is behind the one for HDD project.
[343.45] Cerb: And those guys are doing this technical project that needed input from from live racing events.
[353.45] Cerb: I mean, they're off next week to a big motorcycle race that I'm not allowed to name calendars and look at my.
[366.45] Cerb: So so I was able to bring my my collaboration with DTG imaginary pictures.
[381.45] Cerb: I've got the ATS group as well.
[384.45] Cerb: So those like major players, those collaboration partners with FBV Racing Solutions to bring them to BDRA and introduce them.
[395.45] Cerb: And so, look, you guys are looking for video content, rich content, multi stream.
[403.45] Cerb: Perfect. You've got feeds coming from lots of racing bikes, also feeds coming from lots of racing drones.
[409.45] Cerb: So that's perfect. It needed a lot of work on our side from FBV Racing Solutions to to give them telemetry and scores and scoreboards and feeds and all that sort of stuff.
[423.45] Cerb: I was able to bring that in and and join those collaborative partners together.
[428.45] Cerb: And we were very lucky that the one for HDD DTG group collaborated on Western Park and the UK Championships, which is coming up this weekend.
[442.45] Cerb: And we were given a total fund in order to be a part of that technical trial to connect to them into the tune of about fifteen thousand pounds.
[457.45] Frank: Wow. So, yeah, like you were saying, you can get a bunch of grass. Yeah.
[464.45] Cerb: Yeah. So it makes things a lot more reasonable.
[467.45] Cerb: Yeah, absolutely. And that meant that we could do quite a lot. Right. So we can do Western without panicking.
[474.45] Cerb: Western Park, the pilot ticket price probably should have been three figures because of the way things had moved and the price of everything, the price of my keys, the stuff we wanted to do.
[488.45] Cerb: And we'd gone to a point as a hobby where one person had the inflatable gates and they were fantastic.
[497.45] Cerb: And we were able to hire those from that person. Those gates had reached end of life, really.
[504.45] Cerb: They were, you know, a bit past it. They're still usable, I'm sure. But for a big event, could you still trust them?
[513.45] Cerb: So here we are. And that person's having a year off as well. So we need track equipment.
[520.45] Cerb: And I've always said that if the BDR are going to run the UK championships, I don't think they should run Western Park. That's another thing.
[527.45] Cerb: They needed track equipment. So we were able to spend somewhere in the region of three grand on a full set of championship size gem fan gates.
[538.45] Cerb: And again, I mentioned gem earlier, that's another relationship that we were able to use to get sponsorship from gem fan so that we didn't pay full whack for that full set.
[550.45] Cerb: And I always had a bug about using the multi GP chapter size gates.
[557.45] Cerb: Nothing wrong with chapter size gates. They're brilliant. But they specifically were designed by multi GP for chapter events.
[565.45] Cerb: So for us to do the UK championships, that should be with the championship gate, right? So putting chapter gates out on a championship course never really sat right with me.
[576.45] Frank: Just very quickly for people that don't live and breathe this stuff as much as you like. How do they compare?
[583.45] Cerb: Bigger. The championships game is a bigger.
[588.45] Stephen: Is the hole bigger, though? Surely they're the same size hole to fly through.
[592.45] Stephen: The opening is larger. So yeah, shouldn't the championship pilots be better and therefore have smaller gates to fly through?
[602.45] Stephen: Or am I confusing things? Well, that's a DRL.
[607.45] Frank: I guess the idea is that they're all very good. So they're battling for position, right? It's not an obstacle course for them.
[614.45] Frank: They're overtaking each other. So you need the width enough for two of them to go through it.
[619.45] Cerb: Yeah, it should be about picking good lines and flying efficiently. And yeah, so the bigger gates make it less of an obstacle course and more of a racetrack.
[630.45] Cerb: OK, that sounds better for spectators.
[634.45] Cerb: Yeah, yeah, it is actually. I'd like to see some more stuff for spectators actually. But yeah, see how the way you're explaining this.
[642.45] Stephen: It sounds like there's been some not kind of obvious changes, but internal changes in the way that BDRA is treating itself like it's being more of an organization, more professional.
[656.45] Stephen: Would you say that you've seen those changes in the last year?
[660.45] Cerb: Yeah, and it's not just the money. It's not just being able to bring sponsorship in. It's spending that money wisely.
[666.45] Cerb: But also leading the committee into other changes that needed to be made, the rules. So we've had the biggest rules overhaul that BDRA has ever seen.
[683.45] Stephen: Do you have a short version on that? I know they can be incredibly detailed.
[686.45] Cerb: It is terrible. So I led a working group to go out to the community and say, right, time you guys had some input and we got the input and then fed that back to the committee and then overhaul the rules.
[698.45] Cerb: And we worked with Eric, who is part of the FAI as well, to get our rule set more aligned to FAI, which helps us out for international competition.
[709.45] Cerb: So benefits our pilots when they go abroad and also lines us up so that in the UK we can start to look at having a world championship race here.
[719.45] Stephen: Are you hoping that your races can act as qualifiers or line up pilots directly for FAI events and you don't need to do separate events because you're aligned to their rule set? Is that what you're saying?
[732.45] Cerb: Yeah, absolutely. It puts us in a stronger position because we are more aligned to that rule set.
[738.45] Cerb: So that's really something in the background people don't see. Eric is in the chat.
[747.45] Cerb: My lifesaver when it comes to rules. Love that guy. So yeah, but then it's rules, right? So they're always contentious.
[756.45] Cerb: And we did the best we could do with the feedback we got and also within kind of a remit of trying to keep the racing interesting, exciting and scalable and sellable as well.
[768.45] Cerb: We think about that part of it. And did we get them completely right? I think we did pretty bloody well.
[776.45] Cerb: Are there small tweaks that maybe need changing? Possibly, but I wouldn't touch them because it needs 12 months to bed in and figure out where you're going and what you're doing.
[786.45] Cerb: But you get small groups of noisy people that leverage social media very well.
[797.45] Cerb: So make your life hell. And my life has been absolute hell over the rules. People would not let it go, would not leave it alone.
[807.45] Cerb: People have been surprisingly vitriolic and surprisingly rude. And that has to say, is one thing that has beaten me down over this year.
[820.45] Stephen: The unfortunate symptom of sticking your head up and trying to do something, you make yourself a target. And it's a shame that people can't kind of acknowledge that being in that position takes a lot of energy, a lot of focus and is just exhausting.
[833.45] Frank: But it attracts the worst. Where do you think that comes from? Do you think it's just people not understanding that you're not paid for this?
[844.45] Cerb: I think passionate people with no filter. People seem to forget that people seem to forget they're talking to human beings, you know, and to treat people with respect and trust, you know, that that person is doing things from from a good place.
[868.45] Cerb: It's been horrible, absolutely horrible. I've talked to you guys before about the Jim Gibney Memorial Race, which is really, really, really important to me. That's very, very personal.
[883.45] Cerb: And because of the stuff I was doing on the committee, I was like, I'm not sure I'm going to get it done, but it has to happen. That's my promise I made. It has to happen.
[892.45] Cerb: Doesn't matter how busy I am. The Jim race happens. And it happened. And it was great. It was it was really chilled. But we got to the end of qualifying. And a member of my own committee decided he didn't like one of the rules, because it put him into a finals group that he thought he should be one above.
[914.45] Cerb: And it all kicked off. I mean, shouting and swearing and and just like, guys, this is what are you doing of all the events to do this at? Not that one. But stop.
[929.45] Cerb: It should just be a laugh. I mean, yeah. And I made a mistake. When the query was raised, could we change the rule? I should have gone, no, we've got a set of rules.
[943.45] Cerb: That's what we're going to do. And the mistake I made was to say, OK, but if we entertain this, everybody has to come over and discuss it. And everybody has to agree. So all of the pilots came over and we had 10 minutes of back and forth and back and forth.
[957.45] Cerb: And they reached a position where the guys who wanted their own way beat the lower finalists down to a point where they said, oh, just let them have their own way. So we said, OK, we'll go off. We'll do that.
[973.45] Cerb: And everybody had agreed to it. I wasn't really happy with what happened to the lower placed finalists, but they had made a concession. Good on them. And then two minutes later, that group were back again saying they wanted more.
[989.45] Stephen: They wanted different changes. Should have just been like, these are the rules we're flying with today. You want to change anything. You can talk about it. And we'll think about changing it for next time. It can happen offline.
[999.45] Cerb: Yeah. Like, guys, like we've come to a relationship. If we want to have more discussion, we have to have everybody back over again. So we had everybody back over again. And I'm like, this time you're not racing. No one's really having fun.
[1013.45] Cerb: It's just like a massive shouting match. It's the gym. What are you doing? And so everybody had to come back over and it started all off again. And I realized what I've done was wrong. And I said, look, I apologize. What I've done here is wrong.
[1028.45] Cerb: What's going to happen now is we're going to stick to the rules. We will fly the finals to the rules. This is the rules. Section 16, subsection four. This is the rule covers this situation. That's what we're doing.
[1042.45] Cerb: Cataclysmic explosion, anger, swearing. I honestly thought the guy was going to thump me.
[1048.45] Cerb: And and I actually said, right, I'm just going to go off and reject the finals then and sort things out. What I actually did was I went back to my campervan. Sam, my wife gave me a hug and I burst into tears.
[1063.45] Cerb: And I sat in the campervan for five minutes crying my eyes out. And at that point, I'm like, I don't think I want to do this anymore. That's reasonable. That's rough.
[1076.79] Cerb: Honestly, it's a hundred guys across the whole of the UK, a population of 60 million and a hundred people playing with their drones in a field.
[1088.79] Stephen: Yeah, who should appreciate that they're lucky to be able to do this and find like minded people and have a good time with them and just get on well.
[1099.79] Frank: I still think the vast majority get on well. Right. Right.
[1105.79] Stephen: But that's the concept of the Internet, isn't it? The vast majority of people are nice, Frank, but the vast majority of people are pretty quiet.
[1112.79] Frank: I think even in this case, I still feel like even when this happens and this has happened, you know, other events, there have been this sort of tension.
[1126.79] Frank: And my impression of it is from other events where I've seen a similar sort of situation is that it comes from sort of being like you say, the passion being like so invested in the energy of the event in the sort of competitiveness of like, you know, you are competing for this.
[1152.79] Frank: And for those, you know, those few hours, but that is all that matters in the world and not, you know, you sort of deciding to blank out the everything else that including possibly to a fault.
[1169.79] Frank: So the appreciation that you're actually with other human beings that you're kind of there to have come with and get on with.
[1178.79] Frank: I think that's I think that is almost a side effect of filling a field with some of the most competitive people in their most competitive hyped up adrenaline fueled state.
[1191.79] Cerb: Yeah. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. That's not where it stops.
[1197.79] Cerb: And I don't know if it's a factor of us now living in a world where we meet online and people feeling emboldened by that or if people just are generally they have their own egos and their own agendas.
[1211.79] Cerb: But, you know, for that to be a member of my own committee doing that in front of everybody at that event, that's bad.
[1219.79] Cerb: And that sends off that message that as a chairman, I don't have the support of the committee. And and the reason it sends off that message is because I don't because the whole 12 months has been incredibly difficult to work with people that that aren't prepared to embrace change.
[1241.79] Cerb: And also that that don't seem to have that trust. So I came in saying, if I have a mandate for change, if you're looking at the five race series and saying this, this is what you've done, come and come and do some of that.
[1257.79] Cerb: Then then then surely you're bringing me in for that sort of knowledge. And as well as the contacts that I have, the approach that I have, the relationship with the community, you know, I was the first person in the UK to race the championship size gates.
[1275.79] Cerb: And there are there are questions that you have to answer on what size pipe do you use? What size rebar? You know, those gates come in two colors. They come in orange and they come in blue and white.
[1286.79] Cerb: And I've researched for a month or two talking to the community and testing gates. And we we knew we absolutely knew blue and white were the gates to use.
[1298.79] Cerb: And I said to the committee, are the gates to use? So they brought the orange ones.
[1309.79] Cerb: Yeah, that's like one example of all of these like life is too short.
[1316.79] Cerb: I'm banging my head against a brick wall. But you know that all the stuff we did, the changes to the rules, the revamp of the website that we've done.
[1326.79] Cerb: Tiny Whoops. So Tiny Whoops is a fantastic, thriving community, right? And there is some crossover between five inch pilots and Tiny Whoop pilots.
[1336.79] Cerb: But there's also Tiny Whoop pilots that are just Tiny Whoop pilots. And on Wednesday this week, they were in a pub just up the road and Mini Roll's rule was there running his Whoop event.
[1348.79] Cerb: I said, I'm not running in the summer because Whoop pilots only fly. No, it's not true. They're flying. So we've bolstered the BDRA by bringing Whoops under our umbrella.
[1359.79] Cerb: And I led the charge on that to talk to Matt and to bring him in Mini Roll's rule and work with Eric again to get their rule set underneath our rule set without changing anything, without going in and saying, we're going to rewrite how you do Whoops.
[1375.79] Cerb: No, no, no. You tell us how we do Whoops. We'll support you.
[1380.79] Stephen: It's a community. It's the whole point, right? It's not like let's make one tribe into a hundred smaller tribes until we get down to just one person in each group.
[1388.79] Cerb: You come and tell us how you race. You come and tell us what your rules are and we'll put our umbrella over the top of you.
[1394.79] Cerb: And that means at the end of the end of your season, we will then crown a UK Whoop champion because the BDRA is the governing body, right?
[1403.79] Cerb: The BDRA shouldn't be about running two events. It's not a club. It should be about being a governing body.
[1409.79] Stephen: And managing things like sponsorship, right? So managing the media interests, managing the coverage, ensuring that when the money is put in, you can go and say, oh, we've got this many pilots and it covers everyone who's flying drones, not everyone who's flying one specific race class.
[1426.79] Cerb: Yeah. And unfortunately, moderating the rule set.
[1432.79] Stephen: And tuning it up with the international rule set so you can participate in international competitions.
[1437.79] Stephen: So the people doing tiny Whoops benefit from media coverage they wouldn't have gotten otherwise, right?
[1443.79] Stephen: So the people flying five inches are suddenly in a community of hundreds and hundreds of pilots instead of 60 or 70 or whatever it is.
[1450.79] Cerb: Yeah. And you know what? The other kind of sneaky, clever thing about that, Serbs, is you bolster your membership.
[1458.79] Cerb: You grow your community and if you grow your community, you grow your membership and more members is more better.
[1464.79] Cerb: But then and also we did things like I set up the Discord server. So that's been very successful, isn't it?
[1471.79] Cerb: Yeah, I love Discord servers. They work so well for committee chat.
[1477.79] Cerb: You know, like there's the section that you can't see where the committee are chatting and there's separate channels.
[1483.79] Cerb: So instead of like one big Facebook chat where everything gets lost, we can now collaborate much more cleanly and much more easily.
[1492.79] Cerb: And again, that was an uphill challenge. Nobody wanted that because it was change, right? And change is bad.
[1497.79] Cerb: But the guys are on there. The guys are on there. The five inch guys are on there. They can talk about upcoming events.
[1503.79] Stephen: Yeah. And you can create events there. Let's all get together at 8 p.m. one night and fly the simulator or whatever.
[1511.79] Stephen: And you can stream your simulator feeds on there so people can watch.
[1515.79] Cerb: Yeah. Yeah. You've done a YouTube. You can promote your YouTube links up there.
[1521.79] Cerb: Yeah. Collaboration and community. I'm all about collaboration and community.
[1527.79] Cerb: But I'm not about this hard slog to just get the smallest changes through.
[1533.79] Cerb: And I'm not about really struggling with people that aren't going to come with you and aren't going to come along.
[1543.79] Cerb: When I do killer quads and I do FBV racing solutions and I do everything else and every other committee I've ever been on,
[1550.79] Cerb: I've never experienced one that's been quite so entrenched in disagreeing with someone just because it was them that said it.
[1561.79] Stephen: Well, you've just got to look at sports. Even the most traditional of sports like cricket, they have to constantly reinvent themselves to stay relevant.
[1569.79] Stephen: You look at the changes like Indian crickets made, making it matches shorter and uniforms more colorful and so on and so forth.
[1577.79] Stephen: That's the most old and stuffy of sports. And it's constantly reinventing itself to make sure that new people are coming in to make sure people are watching it to attract sponsorship.
[1588.79] Stephen: Right. So why not drones? It's only like a 10 or 15 year old sport.
[1594.79] Cerb: Yeah. But do you in that sport, do you get a small number of people that are very noisy on social media going, oh, this one small rule in a.
[1603.79] Stephen: I'm sure there are. I'm sure there's old men hanging their pipes on the desk.
[1608.79] Cerb: I'm never flying again until this one rule.
[1612.79] Cerb: Guys, fly with your friends and have fun. That's supposed to be the point.
[1618.79] Cerb: If you're only going to races to score points, you're going to races for the wrong reasons.
[1624.79] Cerb: Go out and fly with your friends to have fun and build memories.
[1628.79] Cerb: And remember that time where I was right behind you on the last lap and I smashed into the gate.
[1633.79] Cerb: Oh, that was brilliant. That's the stuff we want.
[1637.79] Cerb: It shouldn't. It shouldn't be.
[1640.79] Stephen: It's going to be some like 14 year old kid somewhere in Asia who flies 10 hours a day.
[1647.79] Stephen: It was going to be off the time you are on every single lap who can crash you.
[1654.79] Stephen: You're not going to be the best in the world. Right. You just got to have a laugh.
[1657.79] Cerb: Yeah. But even like our best pilot soul, I've not seen him since he left a race early.
[1667.79] Cerb: And I suspect he left early because he wasn't having a good time.
[1672.79] Cerb: And you can debate amongst yourselves what was causing that.
[1675.79] Cerb: And he's not at the UK championships this year.
[1679.79] Cerb: He said there's no fun for him anymore. It's not fun anymore.
[1682.79] Cerb: And he's quick and he's gone.
[1685.79] Cerb: Yeah. And that's we've lost something there.
[1689.79] Cerb: And I've lost something this year.
[1691.79] Stephen: The whole FPV community. I mean, I love the technology. I love the fun.
[1694.79] Stephen: I love the hey, I'm a bird. But the amount of toxicity and tribalism is exhausting.
[1702.79] Stephen: I've removed myself from a lot of communities I was in simply because I was trying to help.
[1707.79] Stephen: A lot of the time you go in, someone's got a problem, you try and help them.
[1711.79] Stephen: And they just go, oh, I don't think that's what's going on.
[1714.79] Stephen: I think you're a prick and then you shouldn't be here and you shouldn't do this and do that.
[1718.79] Stephen: And I'm like, OK, I was just trying to help.
[1721.79] Frank: Jack is gathering some pitch books and torches.
[1725.79] Cerb: I think across the community, I don't want to make it sound so terrible because I'm speaking from my seat.
[1730.79] Cerb: And across the community, the community is strong and people will give you a lipo in the pits if you blow them up,
[1737.79] Cerb: even if you're a competitor. That kind of spirit does exist.
[1740.79] Cerb: But the seat that I found myself in for the last 12 months is incredibly difficult.
[1747.79] Cerb: And to face all those challenges and the people, someone said to me the other day,
[1753.79] Stephen: let's put them over a positive angle because you talked about bringing media coverage.
[1757.79] Stephen: You talked about grabbing the streams, getting people to transmit it.
[1761.79] Stephen: What's that done to the sport?
[1763.79] Stephen: I imagine you might be festooning quads with a few more LEDs to tell who's who during races.
[1769.79] Stephen: I'd love that, but I don't think they'll do it.
[1772.79] Stephen: Isn't there a rule for the US guys?
[1774.79] Stephen: Have you got to festoon your quad with at least 50 LEDs or something?
[1777.79] Cerb: The guys that are going off to China, the world, they're having to put LEDs on.
[1783.79] Cerb: Would that filter down, FIA and all that?
[1785.79] Cerb: I would hope so.
[1787.79] Cerb: And I think my relationship with imaginary pictures and the digital television group will continue beyond anything else I do.
[1798.79] Cerb: I don't know what I'll be doing in the next 12 months.
[1803.79] Cerb: But yeah, those changes, I think, will start to come through.
[1807.79] Cerb: I mean, being able to sit and commentate with Matt Andrews and get his ideas from the kind of production side.
[1813.79] Cerb: FPV Racing Solutions is the production, right?
[1817.79] Cerb: And Matt is the talent and he is very talented.
[1821.79] Cerb: Yeah, there's many roles rule.
[1823.79] Cerb: My whoops are.
[1825.79] Cerb: Top dude.
[1826.79] Cerb: And Matt can bring us ideas for production and FPV Racing Solutions can act on those and we have, which is what makes that such a good relationship.
[1836.79] Cerb: So yeah, there are good things.
[1838.79] Cerb: But at the moment, as I look into this weekend and the AGM and the election coming up, I'm in a position where a member of the committee has basically said I can do it better.
[1855.79] Cerb: And stood for election.
[1858.79] Cerb: Let them try.
[1859.79] Frank: I was going to say from the sounds of it, that sounds very good.
[1864.79] Frank: It sounds like you're in a position to step out the way and let them find out how that goes.
[1871.79] Stephen: Yeah, maybe you'll be laughing over the bearer in two years time when they've had their stint.
[1878.79] Cerb: After after a year of amazing success against, you know, the odds and having to work with a committee, which I will freely admit I am.
[1891.79] Cerb: I'm not great with not getting my own way.
[1895.79] Cerb: I'm very much a doer and I shoot for the moon because if I miss I'll hit the stars.
[1901.79] Cerb: And then killer quadrant, you know, the stuff I did not the last 12 months before was incredibly successful.
[1908.79] Cerb: And I had great people around me that supported me and worked with me and came with me.
[1912.79] Cerb: But when you're you're not with people that have joined you because they believe in you, that's actually really hard.
[1922.79] Cerb: And to have such a vote of no confidence, you know, having brought in all of that sponsorship, all of these changes set up, you know, the BDR.
[1934.79] Cerb: I now have to pay for the champs, right?
[1936.79] Cerb: So they have to pay the marquee higher and the pitch higher.
[1941.79] Cerb: But they're currently sitting with over 10 grand in the bank and they're going to pay out a few grand to cover the chance.
[1949.79] Cerb: They then go into the next year with all of that cash on hand to do something amazing, you know, to support grassroots clubs, to do all the stuff that they should be doing as a governing body that they have failed to do this year, despite me trying to keep focus on that and failing.
[1970.79] Cerb: And and after all of that hard work, after all of those tears, after all of those hours that I've taken away from my family to give to the PDR for the community, not because I can say I'm the chairman for the community.
[1985.79] Cerb: That's where I come from.
[1987.79] Cerb: And people that know me know that I start with the community and end with the community.
[1994.79] Cerb: Inflict chairmanship, no.
[1997.79] Cerb: So it's soul destroying.
[2002.79] Cerb: And I did a couple of months ago, turn around and go, I'm not standing again.
[2005.79] Cerb: I was broken.
[2006.79] Cerb: I was absolutely broken.
[2008.79] Cerb: And and to not get that support from from other human beings to say, what can we do?
[2014.79] Cerb: So what's what's going wrong?
[2016.79] Cerb: How can we fix that?
[2017.79] Cerb: It is soul destroying.
[2019.79] Cerb: And I actually took I turned around like a couple of weeks after after talking to some some sage advisors that I have in my life.
[2027.79] Cerb: I'm lucky I've got some very special people in my life and said, no, actually, I've started this.
[2032.79] Cerb: I'm going to keep going.
[2033.79] Cerb: You know, we've brought that money in.
[2034.79] Cerb: We're going to do the good thing.
[2035.79] Cerb: And stubborn.
[2036.79] Cerb: So he came back and I went, right.
[2038.79] Cerb: Let's go.
[2040.79] Cerb: And then I saw.
[2041.79] Cerb: So I spoke to the committee on an individual basis.
[2045.79] Cerb: I was told, honestly, to my face, do not stand for chairman.
[2051.79] Cerb: What?
[2055.54] Cerb: What have I done that's so bad?
[2056.54] Cerb: What have I done that's so wrong?
[2057.54] Cerb: Someone tell me.
[2060.54] Frank: They're probably just a bunch of armchair warriors who, you know, if it was me, if I was on the committee and you asked me should I stand for chairman from what you've told us in the past.
[2073.54] Frank: I say, you know what, sir, maybe maybe don't.
[2078.54] Frank: Maybe you put all that into it.
[2081.54] Frank: And there is such a thing as burnout.
[2084.54] Frank: Yeah, exactly.
[2085.54] Frank: You clearly put a lot into this.
[2088.54] Cerb: And the problem I now face, of course, is how do you go if you do win that election, how do you go back into a committee that don't support you?
[2102.54] Stephen: You start removing people from the committee.
[2111.54] Stephen: Are you saying not an option that Machiavelli would have said otherwise?
[2116.54] Stephen: There's a way.
[2119.54] Cerb: I really hope that whatever happens and whoever it is, the BDR keep going and they do something sensible with that money and they stop all of this backwards and forwards on.
[2131.54] Cerb: The rules and the rules and the rules and they focus on international racing and on promoting the grassroots hobby, building, building the membership backup, supporting.
[2144.54] Cerb: So the next target is X class and wings, right?
[2147.54] Cerb: These guys, they're out there.
[2149.54] Cerb: The whoops.
[2150.54] Cerb: We've got a good model for that.
[2151.54] Cerb: How can we help you?
[2152.54] Cerb: How can we as a governing body go out and help those other parts of the sport?
[2157.54] Cerb: That's what should be going on.
[2159.54] Cerb: Not spending six months talking about where the marquee is going at Western Park.
[2166.54] Cerb: I'm sorry, but that's crazy.
[2168.54] Cerb: And to then, you know, face a challenge from from inside your own committee, it's a good thing.
[2178.54] Cerb: It's a, you know, that people have that passion.
[2180.54] Cerb: But for me, it's a bad thing because, you know, it says go away Serbs.
[2186.54] Cerb: So my heart is still in the ring.
[2190.54] Cerb: Should my heart still be in the ring debate amongst yourselves.
[2196.54] Frank: This episode was recorded in front of a live online audience, downloaded and edited to make sense when it played audio only sensors to please the iTunes people hosted on the Internet,
[2206.54] Frank: forwarded through to your podcast provider, downloaded, playing on your device and is now playing in your ears.
[2211.54] Frank: All thanks to our Patreons.
[2213.54] Frank: Consider joining them and you'll also get other online benefits.
[2217.54] Frank: Find out more at patreon.com.
[2221.54] Cerb: One thing I do know is that, you know, I want them to be successful and wherever I am in the next 12 months, I will be successful.
[2230.54] Cerb: I'll go off and I'll do what I do and I'll do it well and I'll keep those relationships.
[2239.54] Cerb: Possibly not such a great relationship with the media.
[2242.54] Cerb: I don't know.
[2243.54] Cerb: I don't know what that would look like.
[2246.54] Cerb: I'm only human.
[2247.54] Cerb: I have emotions.
[2248.54] Cerb: Somebody said to me the other day, oh, the problem is you take it personally and it's just business like Ben.
[2255.54] Cerb: It's not business.
[2256.54] Cerb: It's playing with toys.
[2260.54] Cerb: It's very hard not to take it personally when you're getting, you know, attacked from so many angles.
[2267.54] Cerb: And I make it sound terrible because that's kind of where I am right now.
[2271.54] Cerb: But there are plenty of people that have said plenty of nice things as well, but they get drowned out by those noisy voices.
[2282.54] Frank: I think that's part of it, isn't it?
[2283.54] Frank: It sounds like it's a very high octane, been a very high octane year, putting a lot in, getting a lot done, making a lot happen.
[2295.54] Frank: And it sounds like at least the rate it's been going is not a particularly sustainable way that you can keep up.
[2306.54] Frank: So I feel like there's there's almost that side of it.
[2310.54] Frank: Like you can't keep doing that every year.
[2314.54] Frank: You can't have another year like this year.
[2317.54] Cerb: And so you can't keep repeating what the BDR does year on year and expect success.
[2323.54] Cerb: You can't because Covid killed the membership numbers.
[2327.54] Cerb: And in other parts of the world, membership numbers are coming back.
[2330.54] Cerb: But in the BDR, they're going down.
[2333.54] Cerb: And and that's because that grassroots support isn't there.
[2337.54] Cerb: That that support system isn't there.
[2339.54] Cerb: But also in some ways, it's because of the adoption curve of technology.
[2345.54] Cerb: Right. So there's a famous bell curve of technology adoption.
[2350.54] Cerb: And I think we went over the top of that bell curve just as we went into Covid.
[2355.54] Cerb: And so the timing was terrible.
[2356.54] Cerb: It's a it's a bit like I compare it to virtual reality.
[2361.54] Cerb: So there was an initial surge of virtual reality back in the 80s with these massive VR machines and headsets.
[2368.54] Cerb: And it and it surged and then it disappeared.
[2371.54] Cerb: It went away, but it didn't go away.
[2373.54] Cerb: It was still there and the dedicated people were still doing it.
[2376.54] Cerb: And then it kind of came back as as it matured and was shaped into something that was accessible.
[2384.54] Cerb: And I think drone racing is probably doing the same thing.
[2388.54] Cerb: I think this tail off at the moment is probably a fairly natural natural adoption curve phenomena.
[2394.54] Cerb: And the loss of membership isn't necessarily something that's being done wrong.
[2400.54] Cerb: It's a natural way that new technologies behave.
[2404.54] Cerb: And actually, if you stay there, if you stick at the coal face and you use this as an opportunity to build those communities,
[2412.54] Cerb: then when it starts to come back, that inevitable resurgence, you'll be in a very strong place.
[2418.54] Cerb: But you've got to be aware of all that stuff.
[2421.54] Cerb: You've got to understand how that works.
[2424.54] Frank: Yeah, I mean, personally, I think we are in this middle section where.
[2433.54] Frank: So a few years ago, analog was good enough for everything.
[2438.54] Frank: And you could use the same thing everywhere.
[2440.54] Frank: And digital wasn't good for anything.
[2443.54] Frank: And then all of a sudden, digital got good enough for some things.
[2449.54] Frank: And now we've got different systems of digital that are good enough for lots of different things each separately.
[2456.54] Frank: But there's no one universal digital system that is good for everyone in all situations
[2463.54] Frank: in the way that analog was good enough for everyone in all situations.
[2467.54] Frank: And so that's separated a lot of communities and sort of walled off.
[2473.54] Frank: Whereas there would be people that would go and do a bit of freestyle,
[2478.54] Frank: a bit of racing, a bit of wings and a bit of whoops and a bit of this and a bit of that.
[2482.54] Frank: There's a bit more walling off.
[2485.54] Stephen: I think anyone who's been in Soppi for a while would have a pair of analog goggles.
[2489.54] Stephen: The HD0 modules were going for a song a while back.
[2494.54] Stephen: It's not actually that expensive to get into digital anymore.
[2498.54] Stephen: So people, if they want to do it, they'd have multiple systems.
[2502.54] Frank: But that's what I mean, is that, you know, whereas you could have bought a 60 quid pair of goggles,
[2509.54] Frank: like when I started, I could buy a 60 quid pair of FPV goggles, like box goggles.
[2514.54] Cerb: I was throwing box goggles, yeah.
[2515.54] Cerb: Exactly.
[2516.54] Frank: And I could go to every event and tune into anything and be part of any of the communities.
[2520.54] Frank: And a lot of the communities went between all the different events and that was fine.
[2524.54] Frank: Whereas now to be competitive, like anywhere near competitive.
[2529.54] Stephen: Back in that time, I mean, you were buying the budget stuff,
[2532.54] Stephen: but there was also people buying the like LaForge crazy expensive analog systems.
[2538.54] Stephen: Just before digital appeared, analog could coalesce down to being a singular thing.
[2543.54] Stephen: But back in the day, there were all different analog systems.
[2547.54] Frank: But still, it was the best.
[2549.54] Frank: Like whatever was the best for racing was also the best for freestyle in terms of FPV goggles.
[2555.54] Frank: You weren't buying a separate system.
[2558.54] Frank: You weren't having to invest 300 pounds, 500 pounds in a different system to go from racing to freestyle.
[2567.54] Frank: The cameras weren't.
[2568.54] Stephen: Like if you got the rattle that was a beautiful picture quality,
[2572.54] Stephen: the picture quality enhancement came at the cost of latency.
[2576.54] Stephen: And so you'd have like the predators and really low latency cameras that looked crappy.
[2582.54] Stephen: And then you'd have the cameras that looked like, oh my God, am I in a movie?
[2586.54] Stephen: Which had a bunch of image enhancement.
[2589.54] Frank: Mini roll has perhaps a better explanation.
[2594.54] Frank: It's not that the best option was that it was just that everyone had the same option.
[2602.54] Frank: If you had the best racing setup, you could still go to a freestyle event and you would be still with the best of it.
[2615.54] Stephen: Amen, what's up FPV.
[2616.54] Stephen: This is the Gartner hype cycle.
[2618.54] Stephen: The Trump disillusionment, the plateau of whatever it is.
[2622.54] Stephen: This is the Gartner hype cycle, exactly.
[2625.54] Cerb: The good thing, though, is you can actually still turn up to a race with polystyrene box goggles
[2630.54] Cerb: and analogue and win a race.
[2632.54] Cerb: Yes, absolutely.
[2634.54] Cerb: It's still there.
[2635.54] Cerb: And, you know, it's been great to do a little bit with Curry on this walk sail stuff and start looking at that.
[2642.54] Cerb: And actually, you know, are they going to get on board and make it usable for us and dispel some of this tribalism?
[2649.54] Cerb: Oh, I'm DJI and I'm this.
[2651.54] Cerb: It's like, no, you're a drone pilot.
[2654.54] Cerb: And it's good to see those other technologies coming in.
[2658.54] Cerb: And can we use them?
[2659.54] Cerb: HD zero is, you know, Karl absolutely nailed that as a racing system.
[2664.54] Cerb: It's spot on the latency, the glass to glass on it.
[2668.54] Cerb: The way that it integrates with our existing lap timing and the event VRX is that he did.
[2675.54] Cerb: We're an absolutely genius move in terms of marketing.
[2679.54] Cerb: Yeah.
[2680.54] Cerb: Because it meant race directors can go and buy.
[2681.54] Cerb: Absolutely.
[2682.54] Frank: Corner of the market in racing.
[2683.54] Frank: Absolutely.
[2684.54] Frank: Brilliant.
[2685.54] Frank: And that's sort of what I mean.
[2686.54] Frank: It's like if someone goes to the nth degree in racing and then, you know, like you say, burns out.
[2694.54] Frank: Besides, actually, this is this isn't fun for me anymore.
[2697.54] Frank: I need I need a season out of this and doing something else.
[2702.54] Frank: They are not going to be able to take those that HD system and go meet up with their local freestyle free sellers and be engaged with that community as much as it used to be
[2715.54] Frank: when no one had that option.
[2717.54] Cerb: Yeah.
[2718.54] Cerb: If you find yourself buying a buying a wing with walk style on it and like you're in this, you're in a different part of the forest all of a sudden.
[2726.54] Cerb: Yeah.
[2727.54] Cerb: You've got to relearn a lot more different people.
[2730.54] Cerb: And it's how do we how does the BRA bring those people in and help them in a system?
[2736.54] Cerb: Right.
[2737.54] Cerb: Instead of being there's that XKCD thing of there are 15 competing standards.
[2743.54] Cerb: Yeah.
[2744.54] Cerb: Yeah.
[2745.54] Cerb: One universal standard to unite them all.
[2747.54] Cerb: Yes.
[2748.54] Cerb: There are now 16 competing standards and it's getting away from that.
[2753.54] Cerb: People having to go off and reinvent the wheel rather than getting together and inventing a superb wheel together rather than inventing five mediocre wheels apart.
[2765.54] Cerb: And that sounds cruel.
[2766.54] Cerb: I shouldn't say that people are inventing mediocre wheels.
[2769.54] Stephen: You know, we're getting there.
[2770.54] Stephen: I think we had the open HD guys and we had the open IPC guys on this show probably coming up to a year ago now.
[2778.54] Stephen: And both of those projects are starting to get the first hardware out.
[2782.54] Stephen: We've got a run cam board where run can have taken one of their cameras and they've got a third party wireless module that they've put on and they're selling it as a package.
[2792.54] Stephen: Open HD has a bunch of options available as well.
[2796.54] Stephen: So they're slowly starting to get mainstream.
[2799.54] Stephen: And when that type of design gets perfected, it's going to be cloned and there's going to be an exponential increase in popularity.
[2807.54] Stephen: Yeah.
[2808.54] Stephen: Yeah.
[2809.54] Stephen: It's the first universal design that is a single board that fits in everything.
[2814.54] Stephen: And then all of a sudden, boom, clone.
[2816.54] Frank: Fantastic.
[2817.54] Frank: We are in that trough in between the two.
[2821.54] Frank: We're in the days where there's a universal analog system.
[2825.54] Frank: And the future days when there will be a universal.
[2828.54] Stephen: Frank probably remembers the days when analog transmitters were the size of a pack of playing cards.
[2833.54] Frank: Oh, yeah.
[2834.54] Stephen: I've still got some.
[2835.54] Stephen: Yeah.
[2836.54] Stephen: That's kind of where we are with kind of universal distortion.
[2839.54] Frank: I had a video receiver that you tuned with a knob to the right frequency.
[2844.54] Frank: What could go wrong?
[2845.54] Frank: Exactly.
[2846.54] Cerb: That's where the excitement is.
[2847.54] Cerb: Yeah.
[2848.54] Cerb: And the technology is part of it.
[2850.54] Stephen: That's what people want from their RF equipment.
[2853.54] Cerb: That's why FPV Racing Solutions is a thing, because I like that sort of stuff.
[2860.54] Cerb: And then that's translating now into not so much part of my hobby, but part of not a business, but a thing that I can do that not many other people can do.
[2873.54] Cerb: And I really like that.
[2874.54] Cerb: Enjoy that.
[2875.54] Cerb: Yeah.
[2876.54] Frank: A bit of mastering.
[2877.54] Cerb: Yeah.
[2878.54] Cerb: And that has opened up other stuff as well.
[2882.54] Cerb: So this year I flew over to Italy for the World Cup.
[2886.54] Cerb: And part of the WOOP stuff that I do with mini roles, the Birmingham International Race Day, the FPV Racing Solutions.
[2896.54] Cerb: I don't think it was because I was chairman particularly.
[2900.54] Cerb: I got an invite.
[2901.54] Cerb: I was invited to go there.
[2903.54] Cerb: And that's amazing.
[2904.54] Cerb: I'm humbled by someone reaching out and inviting me to their event like that.
[2909.54] Cerb: And they looked after me so well.
[2912.54] Cerb: I was able to spend thousands of pounds on three flights because I canceled my flight home.
[2920.54] Cerb: But it was great.
[2921.54] Cerb: Again, get out there to the other communities and see, what equipment are you using?
[2926.54] Cerb: What rules do you run?
[2927.54] Cerb: Why do you do this this way?
[2930.54] Frank: And this was actually thinking about it.
[2932.54] Frank: With Eric in the chat as well, he can correct me.
[2934.54] Frank: But my understanding of the original formation of the BFPVRA, the previous essence of the BDRA,
[2943.54] Frank: was that there were lots of event organizers around the country all running slightly different rule sets.
[2949.54] Frank: And so when braces went from their regular event where they'd learned all the rules and the processes of going to that event,
[2956.54] Frank: or went to a different organizers event, all of a sudden, their standard processes were all different.
[2963.54] Frank: They had to relearn how to go to an event.
[2966.54] Frank: And Eric and the other organizers at the time went, well, this is ridiculous.
[2972.54] Frank: Rather than us trying to train all the races how to go to our event separately
[2977.54] Frank: and having to retrain them every time the races go to a different event,
[2981.54] Frank: how about let's all have the same rule set that everyone knows and follows.
[2987.54] Frank: The organizers know and have something to fall back on.
[2990.54] Frank: The racers know, have something to fall back on.
[2992.54] Frank: New people coming along can look at it in advance and go, oh, that is what's going to happen.
[2997.54] Frank: And everyone can kind of build up.
[3002.54] Frank: Yeah, exactly.
[3003.54] Frank: And the idea was to ease everyone into all using the same thing, which hopefully it can, the rule set can go 12 months without being tweaked.
[3016.54] Stephen: You leave something five years and all of a sudden people laugh like they've been doing it since time immemorial
[3022.54] Stephen: and then get on that high horse about any future changes.
[3027.54] Cerb: It really needs to go more than 12 months without tweaking the rules.
[3032.54] Frank: Enough for everyone to learn what the rules are and how the event works.
[3037.54] Frank: And for the event organizers to be confident in knowing, oh, this is how the event works.
[3042.54] Stephen: And just be able to stand up and say no.
[3045.54] Stephen: Sometimes you've got to say no.
[3047.54] Stephen: And if someone says, oh, well, I don't think this is fair, you can just say, no, those are the rules.
[3053.54] Stephen: No.
[3054.54] Stephen: Not, oh, we've got to keep everyone happy.
[3057.54] Stephen: Yeah, I mean, you did a nice thing from a moral point of view, like trying to keep everyone happy, but sometimes no is the right answer.
[3066.54] Stephen: Yeah, absolutely.
[3068.54] Frank: Deferring to the rules is a skill, I think.
[3073.54] Cerb: I think that is something that I take away from this 12 months is that you do have to sometimes be cruel to be kind.
[3086.54] Cerb: I want to please everybody and I want to hear everybody's voice.
[3091.54] Cerb: But then you get to be a bit like the guy in the sci-fi film where he can hear everybody's thoughts and it drives you mad.
[3098.54] Cerb: And it's incredibly difficult to do.
[3100.54] Cerb: And there's a good section of the community that understand and say, look, we can see what the BDRA are trying to do.
[3108.54] Cerb: They're trying to hear everybody's voice.
[3109.54] Cerb: They're trying to be representative.
[3112.54] Cerb: And it's a small sport.
[3114.54] Cerb: So it's not like you can have 50 guys competing in this category and 50 guys in that category.
[3119.54] Cerb: You've got 100 people across the whole of the country.
[3122.54] Cerb: So you've got to try and come up with a set of rules that suits everybody that keeps bums in seats and people coming back.
[3128.54] Stephen: Keeps the sponsors because they're crucial to actually keep the equipment like the gates and props and everything else paid for.
[3137.54] Cerb: And you have to with some of those relationships, you have to like with the digital TV group, you have to build technical systems in the background that they can integrate into and that they will turn up and say.
[3151.54] Cerb: Did you hook them into rotor hazard, by the way?
[3154.54] Cerb: Kind of.
[3156.54] Cerb: That's not going down that route.
[3160.54] Cerb: So I say, whilst I've been doing the BDRA stuff, FPV Racing Solutions have also been as a separate entity working incredibly hard in the background on technical connections with DTG and all those guys.
[3178.54] Cerb: I need to shout out all of the partners in it.
[3183.54] Cerb: So you've got Digital Technology Group, the ATS Group, Wave Mobile that we've been working with, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology with us, Fraunhofer, University of Surrey.
[3199.54] Cerb: Fraunhofer?
[3200.54] Cerb: Yeah, they're an MP4 audio.
[3203.54] Stephen: Yeah, I know.
[3204.54] Stephen: Yeah, they invented MP2, MP3. That's just odd to hear.
[3208.54] Cerb: Yeah, so they're part of the digital trial. So we've been working with them as well, funnily enough, on the audio side.
[3215.54] Cerb: And VMO2 are partners with the Digital Television Group as well.
[3220.54] Cerb: So it's big stuff going on in the background that FPV RS were then having to do as well, which was, you know, interesting.
[3228.54] Stephen: And the more names, the better, right? Because that's a revenue chain that enables you to get pitches to build equipment for events to hire venues.
[3238.54] Stephen: Well, that's why I needed to remember to mention them all.
[3242.54] Stephen: Well, I'm just hoping that we're going to be sponsored by some of these beers.
[3246.54] Cerb: Yeah, delicious.
[3248.54] Cerb: I need to shout out the Dutch guys as well.
[3251.54] Cerb: Hi, Max. Do you want to get on camera at last? He's been sat here in front of me just off screen.
[3256.54] Cerb: Yeah, the Dutch guy that I met over in Italy. And I met some great guys over there.
[3262.54] Cerb: And I've got some lifelong friendships now. And Bona from the Dutch Racing Group, who is famous worldwide for his tracks on Velocidro.
[3275.54] Cerb: And he designed multi GP tracks that have been amazingly famous.
[3280.54] Cerb: He designed the Italian World Cup track, and he's actually just designed the 2024 UK Championship track.
[3289.54] Cerb: Really? So it's all on Velocidro now then?
[3292.54] Cerb: No, no, all of them except the UK Champs, because in the UK, the feeling is that being able to fly the track in Velocidro is an unfair advantage.
[3306.54] Stephen: For people that don't have simulators, surely anyone who's in the championship would have a simulator?
[3314.54] Cerb: I've currently got the UK Championships track on my phone. I could fly it right now on my phone.
[3320.54] Stephen: Yeah, I mean, I have Velocidro, and I hate Velocidro, but yeah, I've got a copy.
[3325.54] Stephen: I've just been poked to say...
[3328.54] Frank: I don't think you're the arbiter of what kit people don't have.
[3332.54] Stephen: Yeah, I'm just surprised there are people... I'm surprised the argument's made. I'd have thought it would be...
[3337.54] Cerb: I've just been poked to say that the frown off of stuff is MPEG-H, which is...
[3342.54] Cerb: MPEG-H?
[3343.54] Cerb: Yeah.
[3346.54] Stephen: What new proprietary whole-whole have we been invited into? Let's have a look.
[3351.54] Cerb: So yeah, so we've got, instead of having... There are fantastic tracks as well in the UK.
[3359.54] Cerb: Circles and brackets, mystery, guys in killer quads, Mike was taken.
[3366.54] Cerb: We've got loads of really phenomenal track designers.
[3369.54] Cerb: But to be able to bring in the Dutch track designer who's done the Italian World Cup track and have him do our champs track.
[3380.54] Cerb: So we get a bit of duchy flow, and it's something a bit different.
[3385.54] Cerb: And nobody in the UK is then saying, oh, well, you know, so-and-so from over there designed the tracks.
[3391.54] Cerb: Obviously, he's going to be quicker on it.
[3394.54] Cerb: But yeah, but they won't release it on Velocidrome, which confuses me.
[3399.54] Cerb: For a high-tech sport, I think that's weird.
[3402.54] Cerb: And because of the unique way I learn things, because I do appear on a spectrum,
[3410.54] Cerb: being able to fly a track in a sim beforehand saves me half a day of trying to figure out which direction I'm going in.
[3418.54] Frank: I think also, from a spectator's point of view, I would rather watch people flying a track that they've practiced than learning the track.
[3429.54] Frank: But that's my...
[3431.54] Stephen: The important thing, MPEG-H, right?
[3434.54] Stephen: So this is positional 3D audio.
[3437.54] Stephen: Let's go back to the rabbit hole, all right?
[3440.54] Stephen: Back to the rabbit hole.
[3441.54] Stephen: How does this relate to the drone stuff?
[3443.54] Stephen: Are you getting MPEG-H encoded audio for the drone flying?
[3446.54] Stephen: So you can hear them go, you can watch at home on surround sound and be massively confused as screaming noises orbited your head.
[3453.54] Stephen: I'm going to have to find...
[3454.54] Stephen: So I would do that.
[3456.54] Cerb: Let me find the blurb, because I do have blurb.
[3460.54] Stephen: It's an ISO standard for 3D positional audio supporting a number of sound channels.
[3467.54] Stephen: So instead of traditional channels which were fixed related to the speakers, these new positional audio standards have a number of 3D objects.
[3476.54] Stephen: And each object is like its own track that has positional data attached to it and is mixed in when you actually render it.
[3484.54] Cerb: That's more technical than my marketing blurb.
[3487.54] Frank: Yeah, I was going to say, we'll take this off air after the show.
[3491.54] Stephen: It would be awesome with Quads because you'd be able to literally hear them scream around your head.
[3495.54] Cerb: Let me give you the blurb, although they'll beat me up.
[3497.54] Cerb: So the Fraunhofer iOS technology makes next generation audio a reality.
[3503.54] Cerb: Broadcasters and streaming providers around the globe count on it for their services.
[3507.54] Cerb: And it's the basis of Sony's immersive 360 reality audio music format.
[3512.54] Cerb: MPEG-H audio opens the door to custom entertainment and advanced accessibility options.
[3517.54] Cerb: Simply choose from presets or create your own settings to enjoy a 3D audio experience.
[3522.54] Cerb: This is a more accessible version of Atmos.
[3525.54] Cerb: On mobile devices, soundbar, smart speakers.
[3527.54] Stephen: Mobile devices.
[3528.54] Stephen: Now you're getting 360 audio off a mobile phone.
[3533.54] Frank: Airbuds?
[3534.54] Stephen: Do you maybe wave it around your head on a piece of string?
[3537.54] Stephen: Yeah, that's what you do.
[3538.54] Stephen: On a drone that flies through your head.
[3541.54] Cerb: You see, this is the fun stuff as well.
[3543.54] Cerb: So through those collaborative partners, I'm able to bring them and my love of drones together
[3550.54] Cerb: and put the BDRA into a position where it has some funding in the bank
[3554.54] Cerb: and has a full set of track equipment whilst also getting the excitement of working with these guys.
[3561.54] Stephen: Let's face it, most sports like football are never going to be more than stereo.
[3564.54] Stephen: Left, right, left, right, left, right.
[3567.54] Stephen: You want to feel like something's about to go right into your ear hole.
[3571.54] Stephen: A drone could do that.
[3573.54] Frank: As we come up to the top of the hour and the end of the show,
[3576.54] Frank: I just want to make sure that we get from serve.
[3581.54] Frank: If you do carry on as chairman and you've got that money in the bank behind you
[3587.54] Frank: and you've got a committee that's been in, you know,
[3591.54] Frank: facing in that's supporting you and backing you with everything,
[3595.54] Frank: what do you want to do?
[3597.54] Frank: Because last time, the plan for this year, you wanted to get, you know,
[3603.54] Frank: engage in the public through the Instagram and building up stories and personalities.
[3610.54] Frank: It was increasing use of social media and Discord to bring more people together.
[3616.54] Frank: The Discord is definitely sort of spread out and grown and that's very alive.
[3622.54] Frank: The plan was to engage the organizers with alignment and resources
[3628.54] Frank: and you've got all that kit, all the track kit.
[3631.54] Frank: You've got the money in the bank ready to do things for next year.
[3635.54] Frank: I feel like you've done a lot of what you set out to do.
[3639.54] Cerb: I have, but there's more to do.
[3643.54] Cerb: And the jury is out on what I will do and what my decisions will be in the next two days.
[3654.54] Cerb: And I'm not going to put...
[3657.54] Cerb: I would feel absolutely gutted to not give the community what I want to give the community.
[3665.54] Cerb: I said 12 months ago, everything starts from one question, what's in it for the pilots?
[3670.54] Cerb: So to not have the ability to serve the community and keep those relationships
[3676.54] Cerb: and my reputation to be good rather than being sullied by being dragged into the dirt by these sort of things.
[3688.54] Cerb: I may have to say, actually, my family and my health come first.
[3695.54] Cerb: That is very reasonable.
[3697.54] Cerb: Because much as I love people and I want to see things succeed,
[3703.54] Cerb: I also can't be sitting in my camper van crying for 15 minutes.
[3707.54] Frank: No, first you must put on your own oxygen mask.
[3710.54] Frank: Absolutely.
[3711.54] Cerb: Yes.
[3712.54] Cerb: But if I were to stay on, delegation would be very important.
[3718.54] Cerb: The BDRA is far too mired in being a club.
[3723.54] Cerb: It shouldn't be a club that runs events.
[3725.54] Cerb: There are clubs out there that run events.
[3727.54] Cerb: And also, the day-to-day minutiae needs to be out to subcommittees and groups of passionate people.
[3737.54] Cerb: There are people out there passionate, doing stuff, technology stuff, rotor hazard stuff,
[3743.54] Cerb: rules stuff, but the rules should be left alone.
[3746.54] Cerb: But the next time the rules come up, it should again be a working group.
[3750.54] Cerb: It should be a subcommittee.
[3751.54] Cerb: The pressure needs to come off the committee members and go on to the resources that are out there.
[3758.54] Cerb: The membership needs to grow.
[3759.54] Cerb: It needs to keep growing.
[3760.54] Cerb: It needs to be bringing in the WOOP guys.
[3762.54] Cerb: It needs to be talking to the freestyle guys.
[3765.54] Cerb: There was a massive freestyle festival.
[3767.54] Cerb: And we could have gone along and said, oh, can we have a corner for some racing
[3771.54] Cerb: and do a bit of cross-pollination?
[3772.54] Cerb: Those sort of things need to be done.
[3775.54] Cerb: And you need to encourage the small clubs and go to the small clubs and go, what can we do?
[3780.54] Cerb: How can we help?
[3781.54] Cerb: What can we do to promote you on our website?
[3784.54] Cerb: What can we do to promote you?
[3787.54] Cerb: And also, by osmosis, what can you do to promote us?
[3792.54] Cerb: The brand, so the BDRA logo, that's a rework of the logo.
[3797.54] Cerb: So we looked at it and said, that needs to be in a higher DPI.
[3802.54] Cerb: We need to have a better flag image.
[3804.54] Cerb: We need to tidy up the font.
[3805.54] Cerb: So I actually went away and created a better version of that.
[3809.54] Cerb: Eric gave me some help with it as well.
[3811.54] Cerb: That font is actually the BDRA's own font,
[3815.54] Cerb: because I went away and drew a font to give the BDRA its own font.
[3820.54] Cerb: So there's a TTF of the BDRA font that now exists.
[3823.54] Stephen: Does the BDRA as an organization own copyright and all these things?
[3826.54] Stephen: So you got to that level?
[3828.54] Cerb: No, because they're only tiny.
[3829.54] Cerb: But what needs to happen is a brand guide.
[3833.54] Cerb: So you need to create it and say, like Coca-Cola will only let you use their logo
[3837.54] Cerb: certain ways in certain formats.
[3839.54] Cerb: So the brand awareness and the branding of a British qualifying event
[3845.54] Cerb: needs to be more clearly defined as a franchise.
[3849.54] Stephen: Do you hear that?
[3850.54] Stephen: There's no way that they can stop you misusing the BDRA logo.
[3855.54] Jack: You're hearing this, Jack.
[3858.54] Stephen: BDRA logos.
[3859.54] Cerb: The cops are already turning them.
[3861.54] Cerb: Especially if I'm not there next year.
[3866.54] Cerb: So yeah, promoting the brand and making it aspirational,
[3869.54] Cerb: making BQEs aspirational so that support the smaller races,
[3873.54] Cerb: so that there is a definition between grassroots and a qualifying event.
[3880.54] Cerb: Education, STEM, schools, youth, all that sort of stuff needs to be done.
[3889.54] Cerb: Encouraging the people that are in the background, the streamers,
[3892.54] Cerb: the race directors, talking about race equipment and track equipment
[3896.54] Cerb: and how other clubs can help each other and get people set up.
[3901.54] Cerb: It's so difficult to set up a club, to create the kit,
[3905.54] Cerb: to know what to do, to understand how you're going.
[3907.54] Cerb: And all of that stuff is what a governing body should be doing,
[3911.54] Cerb: not planning where the marquee goes at Western.
[3917.54] Stephen: I hope you can make it fun for the pilots to attract pilots
[3921.54] Stephen: and retain pilots and not see your best talent walk out the door
[3925.54] Stephen: because it's all a bit much.
[3927.54] Stephen: I hope you've got the wisdom and introspection to look and make those choices.
[3934.54] Cerb: We will see what happens.
[3935.54] Cerb: And if it's not me, then I hope somebody else carries it forward
[3939.54] Cerb: and I hope somebody cotton's on that stuff has to change.
[3945.54] Cerb: And okay, so maybe stuff changing hurts
[3949.54] Cerb: and maybe part of it is, well, do you know what serves?
[3953.54] Cerb: You put them through so much change that they're so hurt
[3956.54] Cerb: that now they have to go off and use somebody else.
[3958.54] Stephen: I can't tell their ass from their elbow anymore.
[3961.54] Stephen: They don't know what they're supposed to be flying or when they're flying.
[3965.54] Stephen: They don't even know which calendar.
[3967.54] Stephen: Some of them were still on the old Gregorian.
[3970.54] Stephen: It's just all too much for them.
[3974.54] Frank: Perhaps a bit more charitable.
[3976.54] Frank: They've taken all out of you that they bear to take.
[3981.54] Frank: And it's time for someone else to take the poison showers.
[3984.54] Frank: It's good luck for the BDRA, basically.
[3986.54] Stephen: I think in this day of media, you've got to have a media presence.
[3990.54] Stephen: It's sink or swim.
[3992.54] Stephen: And if you're not existing as a streaming sport,
[3994.54] Stephen: you don't really exist as a sport.
[3996.54] Stephen: So I hope that a sports so fundamentally video oriented
[4002.54] Stephen: as one where the participants are literally flying via video feed
[4007.54] Stephen: can succeed in this era.
[4009.54] Cerb: If I'm that person, if that's who I am, then so be it.
[4013.54] Cerb: If I'm the person that had to go, right, 12 months of growing pain,
[4017.54] Cerb: 12 months of change that's put you in a position of strength,
[4022.54] Cerb: but now you need someone that isn't me because you associate me
[4028.54] Cerb: with the pain of change, then I will take that on the chin
[4031.54] Cerb: and find fair enough because I'm happy that what I've done
[4036.54] Cerb: in the last 12 months is from my heart and for the community.
[4042.54] Cerb: And if they're in a better position and I walk,
[4045.54] Cerb: if I walk away from it now, then I will just look over my shoulder
[4049.54] Cerb: and say, do not **** this up.
[4052.54] Stephen: It sounds like you've done some wonderful things.
[4054.54] Stephen: It's a very callous thing to say you've gotten a few good punches,
[4057.54] Stephen: but I think they've punched you more than anything.
[4060.54] Stephen: It sounds like you've done some amazing things.
[4062.54] Frank: If nothing else, you've left it better than you found it.
[4065.54] Cerb: I believe that. I do believe that.
[4069.54] Cerb: Some people probably don't, but I do believe that.
[4072.54] Cerb: I'm not going anywhere.
[4074.54] Cerb: I'll always have drones on the wall and I'll always be around,
[4078.54] Cerb: you know.
[4079.54] Cerb: It's just more time for the race trailer, right?
[4081.54] Cerb: Yeah, exactly. More time.
[4083.54] Cerb: Oh, how is the race trailer?
[4085.54] Cerb: It's become a workshop.
[4087.54] Cerb: Does it have a jacuzzi yet?
[4089.54] Cerb: It has a leisure battery that I left the lights on
[4093.54] Cerb: and killed the leisure battery.
[4095.54] Cerb: Doesn't sound very leisurely.
[4097.54] Cerb: It's parked behind the campervan
[4099.54] Cerb: and it's become a staging point for campervan building.
[4101.54] Cerb: So it's now, instead of a race trailer project,
[4104.54] Cerb: it's more of a complete mobile...
[4106.54] Cerb: A race campervan?
[4107.54] Cerb: Living and...
[4109.54] Stephen: You're going to be like one of those trucks that's got a screen on the side
[4112.54] Stephen: so you just like drive into an area
[4114.54] Stephen: and this giant LED wall illuminates on the side.
[4117.54] Stephen: So it's flashing FPV race solutions.
[4120.54] Cerb: I'm going to be like the equivalent of a travelling fairground,
[4123.54] Cerb: but for drone racing.
[4125.54] Frank: Just need like a little...
[4127.54] Frank: test the coil steam organ in the corner.
[4129.54] Frank: Yeah, yeah.
[4131.54] Stephen: But for what it's worth,
[4132.54] Stephen: I think you could really rock a ringmaster outfit
[4134.54] Stephen: like with a top hat in the game.
[4136.54] Stephen: Yes.
[4137.54] Stephen: I mean, how do you know I'm a drone?
[4139.54] Frank: We don't.
[4140.54] Frank: I wouldn't be at all surprised.
[4143.54] Frank: Just out of shot,
[4145.54] Frank: he gets his top hat with waistcoat, absolutely.
[4149.54] Cerb: Yeah, whatever happens, I'm not going anywhere.
[4152.54] Cerb: I'll be clustering up your channel whenever you'll have me.
[4155.54] Cerb: I'll be doing something somewhere with a drone.
[4159.54] Cerb: Excellent.
[4160.54] Cerb: Yeah.
[4162.54] Stephen: But we wish you all the best,
[4164.54] Stephen: whether that's heading up the BDRA or otherwise.
[4167.54] Stephen: I wish BDRA the most success.
[4169.54] Stephen: As an organization,
[4170.54] Stephen: they deserve to have someone that's got the energy.
[4172.54] Stephen: And if someone else has got buckets more energy,
[4174.54] Stephen: then good luck to them.
[4177.54] Frank: Thank you very much, everyone.
[4179.54] Frank: You've been listening to Let's Drone Out.
[4182.54] Frank: You've been joined this week by me,
[4185.54] Frank: the apparent Lord Master,
[4186.54] Frank: although I don't feel I have any control over anything.
[4189.54] Stephen: Most responsible person.
[4190.54] Frank: Yeah, the fall guy.
[4193.54] Frank: We have had the guy with the moustache, Stephen.
[4196.54] Stephen: Thank you, and good night.
[4198.54] Frank: We've had quietly in the corner,
[4200.54] Frank: waiting for there to be a cat.
[4201.54] Frank: We've had Jack.
[4202.54] Frank: And we have had Serb,
[4205.54] Frank: the current chairman of the BDRA,
[4208.54] Frank: leader of Killer Quads,
[4210.54] Frank: purveyor of FPV Racing Solutions.
[4213.54] Frank: Thank you very much for joining us.
[4215.54] Frank: Thank you, Josh.
[4216.54] Frank: Thank you for your struggle this past year
[4219.54] Frank: and all the best of luck.
[4221.54] Frank: Thank you for having me on.
[4222.54] Cerb: Always a good time with you guys.
[4223.54] Cerb: Thank you.
[4224.54] Cerb: Cheers.
[4225.54] Cerb: All the best, man.
[4226.54] Cerb: Goodbye.
[4227.54] UNKNOWN: Telemetry lost.