STUDENT STORIES
Professional Drone Racer Enjoys Flying Fast
Imagine the speed of a Star Wars pod race or an alpine ski event. Ashton Gamble ’28 flies his first-person view (FPV) drones that fast — up to 100 mph — through a course lined with 7-by-6-foot fabric gates. One of the top pilots worldwide in the fast-growing competitive sport of drone racing, he has developed incredibly quick reflexes. Spectators simply see tiny lights zipping around the course at night. But the pilots wear FPV goggles to follow the course of the drone.
“In racing, you want to get to the point where you can almost keep your eyes closed, so you’re planning every move in advance,” he says. “You’re going so fast you don’t have time to look at the gate you’re going through; you have to use momentum and line yourself up for the next obstacle.”
Ashton, the Reserve Champion of the 2023 MultiGP Drone Racing Championship and the 2024 World Cup, got interested in the sport when his father, Rand, bought a Phantom quadcopter for his insurance work. The store manager who sold parts to Rand invited them to an upcoming drone race, and Ashton got hooked. He received a basic pre-built drone for Christmas and practiced with his dad. At the next race, the Ventura County FPV Racers regional qualifier in Oxnard, he beat the field. “They couldn’t believe they lost to a 10-year-old,” he says with a smile.
Two years later, he joined a team and competed professionally around the world, including Liechtenstein, where the race track circled the parliament building. Known as Drobot Racer, he competed last summer on an island in Dubai through gates that wound around and above a crowd seated in an amphitheater. “A net protected the spectators as the drones flew around them,” he says. “That was really cool.”
After the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, Ashton began working with Lightcraft, a production services company specializing in camera-movement systems. He shot a Toyota commercial and traveled to Texas to film technical scenes for the Paramount+ show “Lioness.”
“Lightcraft has built these massive drones to carry a standard movie camera,” he says. “They need skilled drone pilots to get some crazy shots that look like CGI but are real.”
For now, Ashton focuses on his studies and thinks about majoring in economics and business and minoring in film studies. A freshman, he enjoys his computer science and New Testament courses. “I’ve never done a super deep dive into the Bible or examined the validity of the books that made it into the canon,” he says. “Telford Work is hard, but he’s really good, loves answering questions and is probably my favorite teacher.”
Ashton still practices several times a week, racing on a temporary course he sets up at Deane Field, thanks to permission from the director of athletics and campus safety.
“This is the first time I’ve been away from home for a long time,” he says. “It’s a lot of learning, a lot of new things and definitely a new chapter.
“I love Santa Barbara. It’s an awesome place to be in school close to the beach. Why wouldn’t you want to be here?”