Ask Tyler “RaceDayQuads” Brennan what first-person-view drone racing feels like, and his eyes light up.

“This is like the first week of having a brand new video game—except it lasts forever,” says the 22-year-old drone pilot from Colorado. He says he’s hooked, addicted. And he’s not the only one.

“There’s nothing else like it,” says Ken “Flying Bear” Loo, another avid drone racer. “It’s really immersive and a great experience.”

At the 2016 U.S. National Drone Racing Championships on Governor’s Island in New York City early this month, drone pilots gathered to test their racing chops. Drone racing is one of the first mixed-reality sports, combining virtual and physical worlds. A camera in the nose of the drone streams a live video feed to a set of virtual reality goggles. Thisfirst-person-view (FPV) experience gives pilots the sensation that they’re right in the cockpit of an aircraft, dodging through trees and soaring over buildings.

Brennan, like the other pilots gathered on the field, had competed at one of several qualifying events held all over the country, earning the right to race in in the finals. For him, the event represented a last hurrah before heading off to fly actual planes for the U.S. Air Force. But organizers hope that a heightened level of competition—combined with ESPN’s coverage of the event—are signs that the budding two-year-old sport could go mainstream.

While some pilots are drawn in by the adrenaline rush, they often stick around for the engineering. Many start off purchasing a pre-built drone. But as those crash and break, pilots get out their soldering kits, make their own repairs, and start customizing, meaning that the sport is as much about “making” as it is about racing.

In designing their drones, pilots adhere to a fairly minimal set of requirements set by the Drone Sports Association (DSA). According to DSA chief executive Shahand Barati, that’s by design. DSA’s strategy is meant to spur innovation in a sport where the technology is constantly evolving. Pilots design their own frames and then cut them out of carbon fiber; they hand pick all of their components—including flight controllers and motors—and then test everything themselves until they hit upon a version that fits their unique flying style.

Take “Zoe FPV” Stumbaugh for example. She got her first taste of the thrill of drone racing when medical complications got in the way of her original passion, riding motorcycles. The rush of flying like a bird, without having to leave her seat, was the perfect substitute.

But her love of flying quickly developed into a passion for tinkering.

“When I got into the hobby I didn’t know how to solder anything together,” she said. “Now I’m soldering all my own equipment, I’m programming all my own equipment. I’m working with manufacturers to develop new product for the market—stuff that doesn’t exist yet.”

For “Flying Bear” Loo, this freedom to hack and tinker is a major draw. He says designing and optimizing drones is a perfect complement to his day job designing consumer gadgets. It has given him the opportunity to try out new skills such as programming firmware and software—skills that then augment his professional work.

“I burn up all my vacation time, and my team members think I’m crazy,” Loo says. “But it’s something I love to do, so I’m just going to keep doing it and having fun.”

Prodrone makes some of the more unusual drones we’ve seen but this one takes the cake, because it can literally take a cake with its two arms. It weighs 20 kilograms, and its arms can handle 10-kg payloads, with a 30-minute flight time.

Drone designs are usually a choice between flexibility and endurance. You can either go with a multirotor that’ll let you hover and make pinpoint landings, or you can go with a flying wing, which can handle bigger payloads and longer ranges. Finding a compromise is difficult, and usually, it’s also very messy.Amazon and Google, for example, are both working on delivery drones that have a whole bunch of frequently superfluous motors and propellers that help the drone to transition between hovering and efficient forward flight. 

Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has a history of managing to make successful drones that combine the best features of VTOL and fixed-wing flight. With their latest aircraft, they’re going old-school, with a biplane that can also take off and land vertically. The Delftacopter (get it?) is designed for outback delivery: not the steakhouse, sadly, but the mostly empty part of Australia, where the TU Delft team is testing its drone.

Historically, the reason to use a pair of wings in a biplane configuration like this was for reduced weight and strength. The wings in a biplane can be shorter than a monowing while still producing a given amount of lift, improving maneuverability, and the airframe as a whole can lift more weight for its size. The tradeoff is an enormous increase in drag resulting in a much lower top speed, but that’s not generally something that is as big of a deal for autonomous drones as it is for impatient humans. In the case of Delftacopter, the double wing also limits the influence of wind during take-offs and landings. 

With that one big prop that it uses for both vertical takeoff and landing and horizontal flight, Delftacopter is efficient, compared to other hybrid platforms that rely on entirely separate systems for lift and thrust. Delftacopter does need to counteract the torque of that single enormous rotor, which is why it’s got those two little propellers out on the wings, but they’re tiny enough that they don’t have much of an effect besides preventing the drone from spinning out of control. Still, I wonder why they didn’t just make a much smaller version of the Convair XFY Pogo.

Anyway, Delftacopter is fully autonomous (with an Iridium satellite link for operation anywhere on the planet), and has a range of 60 kilometers with a top speed of 100 kilometers per hour. The autopilot takes care of horizontal flight, vertical landings, and the exceptionally tricky transition between the two.

The drone’s first job will be to pick up a blood sample from some poor shlub named Outback Joe who will be located in rough terrain somewhere in the Australian outback. While this is probably something that happens in Australia all the time, this particular scenario is part of the Medical Express UAV Challenge, which is taking place next week just outside of Brisbane.