FPV drones / building since eighth grade
Built tocrash.
I have been building FPV drones for years: cutting carbon fiber, soldering electronics, mounting cameras, flashing firmware, crashing, repairing, and flying again.
It started as a high-school obsession and became a practical mix of hardware, controls, video, and field problem-solving: real rigs, real field days, and one later drone and video clip from Module.
Harker Aquila profile2018
started building and racing FPV drones
120 mph
speed cited in Harker Aquila profile
Scratch
carbon fiber, electronics, camera, video transmitter
Module
later applied drone/video work in a real internship
The actual work
FPV is hardware with consequences.
The Harker Aquila profile described the process pretty accurately: find a design, cut carbon fiber, do the electrical work, mount everything, work out power distribution, attach the camera and video transmitter, then get it in the air. The catch is that every build changes once it meets gravity.
Control
Radio gear, goggles, camera feeds, and tuning.
Maintenance
Build, diagnose, solder, reassemble, repeat.
Video carryover
The drone and video habit later showed up at Module.
This clip comes from the Module work. It is not a personal FPV race clip, so I am labeling it plainly: drone and factory media from the internship, used here because it shows the same camera-and-motion skill in a professional setting.
Photos
Builds, field days, and broader drone context.
“You’re building something from scratch.”
That line from the Harker Aquila profile is still the cleanest summary. FPV looks like flying, but most of the work is building, diagnosing, and getting comfortable with the fact that every crash is just another hardware review.
Read the profile