Equipment history: from analogue goggles to digital video, as the sources date it.

This page dates racing equipment only as its sources date it. It names parts and systems; it does not describe how to build, wire, tune or set up anything, and it does not say any equipment is legal or safe to fly. Where a maker says it was first, that is the maker's claim. Equipment as it stands is in Equipment.

Analogue video: the first two decades

Bard's 2016 explainer, citing a 2011 Air & Space article, dates FPV model aircraft to the late 1990s, when cameras and video transmitters became light enough to carry. It names four advances behind the racing boom, without dating them: FPV video systems; powerful motors and batteries; lightweight cameras and video transmitters; and crash-resistant carbon-fibre frames. A 2011 Boing Boing post, seen only as a search summary, described hobbyists using cheap video cameras and eyeglass displays for a pilot's-eye view.

Model Aviation (August 2012) calls the Pilot View FPV system, sold from roughly early 2008, one of the first off-the-shelf FPV systems an ordinary modeller could fit. Wikipedia says the goggle maker Fat Shark was founded in 2007 by Greg French. DroneLife, a trade publication, wrote in December 2021 that Fat Shark had been "the name" in FPV goggles during the analogue era; that is the publication's opinion. The July 2015 US national championship in Sacramento carried the maker's name: the 2015 Fat Shark Drone Racing National Championships (Make:, 23 July 2015). The Christian Science Monitor reported a 13-inch motor-to-motor limit on aircraft at that event.

An aircraft in a museum

The AMA's National Model Aviation Museum holds the aircraft that won the first AMA-sanctioned race in May 2015: Zoe Stumbaugh's modified 290 mm hexacopter, which she called "Rat", given to the museum with her Turnigy 9XR Pro transmitter and Boscam FPV goggles (AMA museum blog, 21 July 2017). That race is on the first races.

Racing video channels and power

The FAI's 2024 World Drone Racing Championship rules expect Raceband, a set of eight 5.8 GHz channels at 5658, 5695, 5732, 5769, 5806, 5843, 5880 and 5917 MHz, and cap every video transmitter, analogue or digital, at 25 mW. No dated source from a maker or rule-maker was found for when Raceband was introduced or by whom, so its origin is unconfirmed. Earlier, the FAI's 2019 F9 volume (effective 1 May 2019) had already required video transmitters to be set to 25 mW at most, and barred organisers from limiting the authorised list to a single transmitter or choosing it on commercial grounds. Radio law on transmitters is a separate matter, set by each country's regulator; see radio rules by country.

Size, battery and propeller rules over time

Each body's rules are its own, and they are given here one body at a time:

• AMA, 2014: Document 551, approved by the AMA's Executive Council in 2014, allowed indoor FPV with ultra-micro aircraft up to 150 g and micro aircraft up to 300 g, all-up weight. Whether it is still the current AMA version is unconfirmed.
• AMA, 16 June 2016: the AMA's FPV Multi-Rotor Club Sport Racing Recommendations named a micro class up to 150 mm and a 250 mm class, and limited batteries to 4S packs. No later AMA racing document was found, so whether these recommendations still stand is unconfirmed.
• FAI, 2019: the F9 volume effective 1 May 2019 limited F9U propellers to 6 inches, banned full-metal propellers, and forbade any propeller protection device.
• FAI, 2025: the 2025 edition (effective 1 May 2025) keeps the 6-inch and full-metal limits, and its change log records that the ban on propeller protection devices was removed in the changes effective 1 January 2020, stating there is no safety reason to prohibit them. A 2026 edition exists but was not read; its effective date is given as 1 January 2026 by a search summary of its cover and as 1 June 2026 by a trade article.
• MultiGP, 2026: MultiGP's class page, read in October 2026, runs from a ducted Whoop class (frame at most 65 mm, propellers at most 31 mm, one cell) to a 7-inch Pro Spec class.

Today's limits for each body are on the FAI F9U rules and MultiGP classes.

League-built racers

The Drone Racing League flew every pilot on identical aircraft it built itself. The Ringer (2018) names Racer3 for Season 2, Racer3S for Season 3 and Racer4 in development; Wikipedia gives Racer2 for 2016, Racer3 for 2017 and 2018, and Racer4 from 2019. The league's RacerX set a Guinness World Record of 163.5 mph for a battery-powered remote-controlled quadcopter, reported on 20 July 2017; The Ringer reported a top pace of almost 180 mph, a peak rather than Guinness's averaged figure. More is on Drone Racing League history.

The Tiny Whoop

The origin of the small ducted racers known as whoops rests mainly on one source. An undated German page on drohnen.de says the Tiny Whoop began in early 2016 as a modified Blade Inductrix, a small toy quadcopter from Horizon Hobby, fitted with stronger motors and a micro camera, and credits Jesse Perkins of Team BIG WHOOP. Because that date is single-sourced, it is unconfirmed.

Model Aviation (December 2017) gives no date but says the Tiny Whoop grew out of micro drones flown at DroneHaus, a house rented by Team BIG WHOOP, which Jesse Perkins, Chris Fischer and Jordan Temkin co-founded, and that Perkins then ran a Tiny Whoop Facebook group of 21,000 members. An undated Model Aviation web feature calls the Tiny Whoop a homemade FPV quadcopter that became hugely popular with racers, and says Horizon Hobby went on to make a ready-to-fly Blade Inductrix FPV.

No body read for this site defines a "Tiny Whoop" by that name; MultiGP's Whoop class is the nearest. In 2025 the FAI removed a Lithuanian World Cup event from its calendar because it planned Tiny Whoop models that do not meet F9U rules (FAI 2025 World Cup page).

Digital video, from 2019

The rule books followed. The FAI's 2024 championship rules allowed analogue and digital 5.8 GHz video, both capped at 25 mW, and the 2025 F9 volume keeps analogue and digital systems in the 5.8 GHz band only. MultiGP's Pro Spec page for the 2025/26 season allows HDZero or analogue video, while its class page says any video transmitter is permitted for Pro Spec; the two MultiGP pages disagree.