SportTechie’s Athletes Voice series features the views and opinions of the athletes who use and are powered by technology. SportTechie caught up with 2019 Swatch DRL Tryouts winner Chris “Phluxy” Spangler to talk about his transition from esports to drone racing, and how he won his pro contract.
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When Chris “Phluxy” Spangler returned home in 2016 after six years serving in the U.S. Army, he’d been pondering what he wanted to do with his life. He thought maybe cinematography would spark his interest, maybe something involving information technology. When he went on the internet to research videography, he came across videos of drone acrobatics. That shifted his focus entirely.
Spangler had dabbled in competitive video gaming since 2008. In 2013, he had competed in a UMG Call of Duty tournament. Drone racing seemed to bridge the gap between esports and real life. After a significant amount of time spent on YouTube, Spangler set out on his own drone flight in June 2017, one year after he had left the military. He flew a 5-inch drone that he had built himself.
That began an amateur drone racing career in which he competed in small races and practiced on simulators. He finished fourth at the 2018 DRL Tryouts, missing out on the chance of a pro contract. But in February, the 28-year-old won the 2019 tournament at the HyperX Esports Arena in Las Vegas, walking away with a $75,000 contract to compete in the 2019 DRL Allianz World Championship Season.
Since winning that contract, Spangler has been honing his skills for the upcoming season, which begins on Aug. 11 on NBC and Twitter. He still has a day job, working in IT as a network administrator. But he plans to transition full time to drone racing as soon as he can start training with the official DRL-distributed racing drone.
Back home in Minnesota, Spangler has also been coaching a team of students at St. Louis Park High School ahead of what will be Minnesota’s first high school-level drone racing tournament. The event will be hosted by HydraFPV a developer of a free-to-play platform that enables fans to wager points on winner outcomes during live drone races. The St. Louis Park Orioles will face the Apple Valley Eagles on May 18.
Esports to Drone Sports
“I’ve been playing games competitively since my junior year in high school. As soon as I found out I could play video games and there was a scene for it and someone introduced me to it, I’ve been playing. Two thousand eight was the year I got hooked.”
“[But] esports was never a thing where I thought I was going to make a living out of it. I felt like an old man who was missing his football days and goes out to play with his friends. I was still playing the game and searching for competitive matches, but I wasn’t in the pros. I was more a spectator.”
“Simulator drone racing, I would consider it an esport. We’re playing on computers, we’re competing in a video game essentially, so I would say that it is an esport. Drone racing kind of bridges the gap between playing video games and actually getting outside and being able to use space. It’s basically racing in 3D. Instead of having a track that’s all flat, we now can go up over trees, through gates, and do all this other stuff. So I think it’s a great cross between real life and video games.”
Finding a New Career
“When I got out of the Army, I knew I wanted to do IT stuff because I’m a big computer nerd and it’s what makes sense to me. I started looking at drones and DJI stuff, and I saw dudes doing freestyle tricks with drones. I thought, ‘That is the craziest thing ever, I need to do that.’ I got on the simulators and found out there were online lobbies where people were racing so the whole video game side of me kicked back in. I would get on these simulators and race these dudes who were online. From there, I immersed myself more and more into this community. I kept pushing myself.”
“I built my first drone using YouTube beginner builds. I already knew the electronics part, so soldering wasn’t as hard for me to get into because I’d already had that experience in the past. Jun. 4, 2017 was the first time I flew a real drone. It was crazy, it was like I was a bird. I could go do things I should never be able to do. I was a Jedi and X fighter just hauling ass through trees. It was an out-of-body experience. You get to become one with a machine you’ve built and that’s unexplainable.”
Earning a Place in the DRL
“I put in a lot of work for this over the last year—a minimum of three hours a day on the simulator. Sometimes I would come home from work and play until 2 or 3 in the morning. From 4 o’clock when I get home until bedtime in the morning. Lots and lots of work. We are training our minds and our hands and our muscle memory the same way that an athlete is training their muscles by lifting weights.”
“I do race real-life drones—I’m not a simulator baby—and I do really well with that too. I was at the Tiny Whoop Invitational [earlier this year] and I got second place. I have a lot of quads. I do a lot of racing.”
Staying Calm
“My background in video games I think has really helped me. I’m not new to the stage. I love it. And I think that’s one of the main reasons I was able to keep it together up there and do what I needed to do because I have the mindset over some of these other guys that might come out here and be shaky and be a little nervous up on the stage.”
“I think the mindset—people’s mental game—is more than 50 percent of drone racing. More than 50 percent of anything, to be honest. Because everyone out here had the ability to do what I did. You saw how close the races were. Anyone could have had it. But the difference is, I know how to keep myself calm. I don’t get shaky hands. In through the nose, out through the mouth. I know how to breathe, I know how to keep my heart rate down and just focus on what I need to do rather than focusing on the crowd that’s out there.”
Fan Engagement
“The HydraFPV guys with the betting app, they’re getting the crowd involved in a way that it has never been involved before. People would watch drone races and there was nothing to get excited about. They would want their pilot to win and if their pilot they liked won, that was exciting. But now they’re betting on which position all six pilots are going to be in, that changes everything.”
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