'Shaky from the adrenaline': Edmonton veteran builds drone that flies 150 km/h

An Edmonton man is creating a buzz with his drone business. Martin Vendrame has been working with drones since 2016. He builds drones that can travel up to 150 km/h.

“I built this drone last winter so I could film cars,” he told CTV News Edmonton. “I did a few gigs flying and chasing cars at different motorsports events and the drones I had at the time were not fast enough. So I decided to build one of my own.”

“It’s called FPV [first person view], there are these kinds of drones, you need goggles to fly them, and they’ve been around for over 10 years now. But they’re really catching on lately.”

The goggles help Vendrame see what's happening with the drone to control it.

The former military mechanic says he’s always had a love of gadgets.

“I grew up messing with electronics a lot, so I was familiar with electronics quite a bit and then after I left the army, I found drones,” he said.

“When I first built my first drone, I ended up crashing it a few times. Then you learn how to fix it, and then from there you’re confident enough to learn how they work and use YouTube as a friend and build a drone.”

He says there’s a learning curve in flying a drone that can reach such high speeds because every part of it needs to be manually operated, and mistakes are costly.

“Just the drone itself is about $1,000 to build one of those. Then you put a GoPro on there, that’s another $700 right there. So when you crash it’s not the cheapest thing to do. ”

But he adds that flying the drone is a rush.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Martin With DroneBuzz (@martinwithdronebuzz)

“When people see me fly, they just see me standing like this, but they don’t know I’m like inches away from a car going 110 [km/h]. And then when I land I’ll be all shaky from the adrenaline rush. But people are like, ‘Oh, you just stood there for five minutes.’”

Now Vendrame makes his living through his company DroneBuzz, which is a company that shoots drone video for clients. Since the company launched, he’s already had some amazing opportunities.

“I was hired to shoot some drone shots of a music video, and the singer was throwing money off the top of an Edmonton building, and I was to fly an FPV drone through the money and around the singer on top of a building. It was really cool.”

And he’s hoping his gadgets will bring more opportunities in the future.

“Hopefully more work with drones and more drones!”

You can follow Vendrame online to check out his videos.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Galen McDougall.