"Feeling like you're flying without the expense of flying," is the way Wing Commander Keirin Joyce puts it. "It's the cheapest motorsport around."
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"You don't need to be fit. You can sit in a chair and feel like you're racing at 100 or 200 km/hour without being in danger," is Lance Bombardier Riley Van Leeuwen's view.
They were speaking with the buzz of the drones at the national racing championships as background noise.
Over this weekend, 72 of the fastest drone racers from Australia, New Zealand and Japan are competing to become the Australian Drone Racing National Champion.
Drone racing involves flying a done from controls in your hand but, unlike with the drones you see everywhere, pilots fly these drones with "first person view" headsets which show the pilot view as seen by the camera on the drone itself. As the drone loops the loop, so does the view in the headset.
The championship tests speed and the ability go through and around an obstacle course.
"The best drone racers from across the Asia-Pacific are here," competition organiser and president of Australian First Person View, Tim Crofts, said.
There's a strong military presence at the two-day event at the Australian Defence Force Academy sporting grounds at Duntroon. Both the army and the air force have drone racing teams competing.
Drones are big in the military and getting bigger.
"We can multiply the effect of our forces," Wing Commander Joyce, who is managing the army team, said.
"Instead of sending a human to go through a building or to look over a hill, we can go first with cameras," he said.
The eyes of a drone - its camera - are often better than human eyes, particularly at night with thermal imagining. "We can remove our soldiers from risk."
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He got involved when he "was looking for ways for the army to engage with drone pilots around Australia so we could talk about defence as a career".
He said that because drone pilots built their own machines, they often had a variety of technological skills beyond just piloting them.
Lance Bombardier Riley Van Leeuwen is an army drone operator. "When I was younger, I was always playing around with remote-control cars and helicopters, and I realised that in the army you can learn to operate military drones and also get a degree and be paid," he said.
The competitors are nearly all male, including young teenagers. There is an atmosphere of camaraderie as the tiny aircraft whizz around.
Sixteen-year-old Davey Newman from Canberra got the bug after an uncle gave him a toy helicopter. He's a student at Hawker College, and he said that building his own drone had taught him a lot about electronics.
In conjunction with the drone race competition, a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Schools Day was held on Friday in Canberra.
"Drone racing is not only great fun but it also provides lots of opportunities for career pathways into STEM related fields such as robotics and engineering," Mr Crofts said.
"Many schools have drone programs so students are already familiar with the technology. Our aim is to increase awareness of future opportunities."
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Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
