How to build your own screaming fast quadcopter drone

The sport of drone quad racing is quickly growing from DIY hobby to full-fledged competitive sport. Unlike off-the-shelf drones like DJI's Phantom series, the racing drones are quadcopters (hence, "quad" racing), generally hand-built and fully customizable. In a multi-part video series, Mashable Creative Producer Sam Sheffer explores what it takes to build, race and compete in this new sport.

After a few phone calls, drone pilot and Liberty Cup Race organizer Randy Slavin put us in touch with some great folks to help out, including New York City electronics megastore B&H who sent over all of the necessary parts for us to build our own screaming fast quad racer. They provided us with a full Team Black Sheep (TBS) quad kit minus the frame. Fortunately for us, the kit required no soldering and saved us a ton of time. We've been told that a more traditional build can easily take up to 6 hours; ours took about 2 hours. Read more...