Professional drone racers are able to complete some pretty fantastical feats with their drones.  Watching them race their drones though extreme obstacle courses can be thrilling.  One drone racer is now making headlines not because of his skill against other drone pilots on a course, but because of how he raced his drone against a real roller coaster.  

Viggo Koch, from Sweden, specializes in First Person View (FPV) drone filming.  Looking through his Instagram feed and video playlist on YouTube he has some amazing First Person View photographs and videos from drone races and extreme sports like motor-cross.  But it is the first video on his channel that is getting a lot of attention right now.  Viggo partnered up with the Liseberg Amusement Park in Gothenburg, SWE to race his drone alongside of one of the park’s roller coasters while recording a FPV video. 

The video begins with Viggo flying his drone through the tracks of the Helix Ride, and moments latter the roller coaster train shoots out of a tunnel and the race begins.  Viggo swiftly follows the train through all of its spirals, ascents, descents, swerves, and upside down loops.  Viggo doesn’t miss a beat keeping up with the 135ft high, 4,531ft long, 62mph steel Helix.  He truly delivered a new point of view of riding a roller coaster.  The camera captures everything smoothly though it seems as though there is a bit of a blur from as Viggo pointed out “There is no artificial motion blur, it just looks a bit more extreme due to the fisheye correction which stretches the image in the corners.”  making it feel like you really are riding the roller coaster.

The drone Viggo used is a custom built racing drone that he has tweaked to fit his flying skills perfectly.  The video was shot with a GoPro Hero 6&7 and a Foxeer Falkor first-person-view camera.mounted on top of the drone.  So that he could see exactly where to navigate the drone Viggo used a Fat Shark HD3 Goggles headset with the ImmersionRC RapidFIRE 5.8 GHz Module and VAS 3-turn Helical Antennas.  Then to pilot the drone he used a FrSky Q X7 Controller with a TBS Crossfire Micro TX long-range radio-control link.  The results are stunning.

Now before you get any ideas about trying to film a roller coaster with a drone yourself, bear in mind that it is strictly prohibited to do so.  Attempting to use a drone in an amusement park could result in serious fines or even jail time.  Viggo was in complete collaboration with the Liseberg Amusement Park.  There were no riders on the Helix while Viggo was filming his FPV drone video.  In fact, the park was not even open to the public yet.  Every safety precaution was met before the park allowed a highly skilled drone pilot to capture this amazing footage.