Drone Racing hosts have relied on Maker Pipe for since 2017 to construct their courses.
MultiGP Drone Racing League, the world's largest league with over 30,000 registered pilots and 760 chapters globally, is founded based on grassroots chapter development, an International Series and production of Premiere events. A majority of events are staged temporarily at venues and feature a mixture of standardized course assets (i.e. Gates) and customized features (i.e. 3-dimensional obstacles). For a vast majority of the event hosts, they are a group of participants forming a local group, or chapter, and have minimal budgets to host drone races.
In the early days, the most in-expensive way of building gates was to purchase PVC and PVC fittings. But unless the thickness of the pipe was extreme and expensive, it was costing a lot after every event to replace the drone racing gate frame pieces destroyed by contact from drones speeding through at speeds of upwards of 85 mph.
A solution was needed to upgrade to EMT or Conduit; and while on the long run the "tops and sides" would end up being cheaper, the connectors were even more expensive than their PVC counterparts, and many different variations would be required to create the array of obstacles.
And that is when drone racing discovered Maker Pipe. Maker Pipe became the most cost-effective solution to building these gates, allowing different angles and positions that standard ends wouldn't provide. With just a few twists of a socket, a gate could be built, dismantled, and then set-up again.
MultiGP produces the largest drone racing festival in the world, the MultiGP International Open, which features over 300 racing pilots (previous record was 177), on up-to-8 simultaneous race courses at one venue. resulting in a grand total of over 100 assets: hurdles, gates, double-stack gates, dive gates, 4-opening ladders and combinations in between, plus track banners, podium backdrops, groundstation towers and more. In addition to our vast stock of EMT, we have a case of over 300 pieces of Maker Pipe that is an asset to produce an event of this magnitude, in addition to our roster of produced events by corporate... Maker Pipe is as equally as important in our arsenal as the timing apparatus.
We love the product as it allows us to be creative in our track designs beyond that standard 5'x5' gate, while allowing us to cost-effectively re-use our construction assets event in and event out.
Joe Scully, EVP of Race Production
MultiGP Drone Racing League
