Tbs discovery pro long range6/1/2023 But the biggest case occurred in the United States, where Pirker was pitched against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the department responsible for monitoring, licensing, and protecting airspace. From London to Singapore, authorities are never too happy with Team BlackSheep’s escapades. “In fact, we got into trouble everywhere,” he says. We wanted to make a point that there are no barriers we don’t need access or permission,” he says-although, he admits, “we got into a bit of trouble there.” We had the curtains closed all around us, with just an antenna pointing at the ship. “When the Concordia hit shore, the Italian government turned the area into a military zone, restricting journalists’ access,” he says. Pirker proved this stance when, in 2012, the cruise liner Costa Concordia ran aground off the coast of Isola del Giglio, Italy. “All three owners have this really distinct idea that, in order to change the status quo, you have to challenge it. We were called the ‘black sheep’ in the local RC community because we would always come in and break all of the rules,” he says, laughing. “We’ve always had this kind of rebel image. “We’re called Team BlackSheep for a reason,” Pirker explains. “Overnight, we got about a thousand emails saying, ‘How can I buy this?’” Pirker, Dunkel, and Masina started building FPV aircraft to sell to consumers, making rudimentary foam wings at first, then purpose-built FPV multirotors, all sold under the Team BlackSheep brand. “That video brought about an explosion of interest in FPV,” he says. In 2010, Pirker released a now-legendary video shot in New York in which he flew up and over the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, and the Manhattan skyline, quickly attracting wider attention to his exploits. On iconic locations including the Rialto Bridge, St. Showcasing the beauty of the city with unique perspectives Use a TBS Discovery quadcopter to fly around Venice, Italy, Nowhere is off-limits to Team BlackSheep (TBS). “A baby monitor transmits maybe a room or two,” he says, “but we turned that into something that can go 15, 20…even back in those days, we put up the world record of 89 kilometers,” he says, pleased with his early long-range FPV achievements. “We were literally flying baby monitors and hacking up the electronics inside,” Pirker explains. Together, they discovered that everyday objects could be repurposed for their needs. Christoph Dunkel and Remo Masina were also experimenting with FPV and quickly joined forces with Pirker to start Team BlackSheep, a drone footage and hobbyist store. While no formal technology existed at the time to facilitate what Pirker had envisioned, he wasn’t the only one considering the problem. “That’s where it really started to click with us what this technology He realized, too, that solving that problem would pave the way to fly beyond lineof- sight. “It was always a dream of mine to get myself up there without actually having to go up there.” With a camera already onboard, the next step was to see what the camera could see. “I’m very lazy, and the mountain always looks better on the top looking down than from the bottom looking up,” For Pirker, that drove him to the next evolution. Wanting to capture the stunning scenery around him, he added a camera to his flights, thinking, “How cool would it be to film that?” Line-of-sight can be limiting at the best of times-even more so when you have the entire Swiss Alps to explore. Preferring his foam-wing drone to his studies, he would head into the Swiss mountains and spend hours doing line-of-sight flying. “I was really bored at university so I had a lot of spare time,” Pirker explains. But it was a potent mixture of “why not” attitude, plenty of spare time, and living in a scenic area that led Raphael Pirker, also known as “Trappy,” to help develop, demonstrate, and popularize FPV. Back in 2003, first-person view (FPV) was little more than a half-baked idea in the mind of a young Swiss- Austrian student studying at the University of Zurich.
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