The Hawaii State Championship Drone Races on Maui did not go as planned for Kona’s local club team. ADVERTISING The Hawaii State Championship Drone Races on Maui did not go as planned for Kona’s local club team. Because of a
The Hawaii State Championship Drone Races on Maui did not go as planned for Kona’s local club team.
Because of a fire after a crash on the first day of racing, the event was not able to end on time causing the Kona club to leave before the end of competition. This led the squad to forfeit their chance to represent Hawaii in the World Invitational’s on Oahu in October.
The state competition took flight on June 25 at Maui Paintball near Lahina. Racers from all over Hawaii attended what was supposed to be a two-day event. Representing the Kona team were Al Sanchez, Aaron Garmon, Aaron Kotaska and team leader Richard Molina.
“Our team was greeted with overwhelming Aloha from all the other flyers.” Molina said. “It was a great feeling to finally meet these people in person after months of social media messaging.”
For the first two hours of racing, everything went as planned. However, a drone suddenly lost its signal while in flight and was lost out in the brush. While nothing was made of the incident at first, that all changed in a matter of minutes.
“Soon after, the cries of ‘fire’ began,” Molina said. “The local fire and police were called and they responded immediately. Upon return to the field, the team was told that the rest of Saturday’s scheduled events were canceled due to the fire and water damage and the course had to be redesigned.”
The second day of races got off to an early 8 a.m. start with hopes of getting as much racing in as possible with several teams scheduled for flights out that night or the next morning. With 50 fliers in the field, the task would prove to be impossible.
The Hawaii Drone Racing Club of Kona experienced early difficulties on the new course. In the first round, none of the club members were able to finish the course. Both Molina and Sanchez crashed on the third turn. Kotaska’s drone suffered a glitch and tipped over on the launch.
However, Kotaska was able to redeem himself in the second round, placing first after edging out a veteran of the sport in Jay Von Brimmer. Technical problems plagued the rest of the crew in the second round. Molina had telemetry glitches while Sanchez had a power cable break loose.
Unfortunately, the Kona crew was not able to continue in the tournament after the second round.
“Sadly, due to the delay of an entire day of racing, the team ran out of time and had to leave the event before finishing the rest of the rounds,” Molina said. “Hawaii Drone Racing is still going to the World Invitationals, we will just not be on the official Hawaii State Team. Until then we will continue our rankings within the MultiGP league and run time trails once a month to stay competitive with the rankings.”
Hawaii Drone Racing is also in talks to host the state championships on the Big Island next year, said Molina.
As for the results of this year’s state championships, Ethan Gulnac placed first, followed by Ian Forbes, Dane Uluwehiokalani Maxwell, Keoni Lee and Nicholas Hayler.
Rounding out the top 10 are Gene Lee, Ephraim David Butolan, Alex Dant, Gabe Hoeffken and Philip Cadiz.
The top five qualified for Nationals and the top 10 qualified for Worlds.
