Thinking back, before FridayFPV was even an idea, a friend and I were out flying, when he turned to me and said “I love flying now!” I thought this odd at that particular moment, as we both love flying! I mean heck, it was a bitterly cold winters morning and we had met up before work to fly. He explained that the frame I had made for him, gave him the confidence to try new lines, explore, entertain the possibilities of new ideas and now he wasn’t constantly anxious and scared about destroying his frame or electronics. At that stage wrecking electronics was a huge concern for us, as everything, and I mean everything, even props had to be imported as we didn’t yet have any local FPV hobby shops.
Backing up a little further to that, the reason I started making quad frames in the first place was out of pure necessity. Our very first order of FPV gear to get started in the hobby was so bulky the company split our order. Our electronics arrived quite quickly, but our frames went MIA on a round-the-world trip for some 4 months due to a mistake made by the couriers.
Enter our first homemade wood, plastic and Heath-Robinson mini-quad to get us started.
This was just a temporary fix, while we waited for our “state-of-the-art and indestructible” mini-quad frames to arrive.
They finally arrived, and lasted us both about a week, before the plastic injection moulding gave out and were left with bits and pieces, well most of the bits and pieces, some of the pieces we couldn’t find are still lying out in that park.
I looked at this and thought, oh well, lets just make better frames. We were hooked, and definitely not going to stop now.
This was the true beginning of Friday.
As we progressed and started new iterations of our very first coffee table-tupperware “masterpiece”, more and more guys started to ask for them. They too were tired of the anxiety and fear of exploding their equipment. As more and more guys started to fly these crazy creations, the more I had guys saying to me how much they enjoyed them and how much more they had started enjoying the hobby. The fact that guys were enjoying the sport more because of these crazy frames was definitely the turning point for me!
It was a Friday evening, I was kicking backing drinking one of my favourite craft beers, ironically the beer was called Friday.
Everyone loves Fridays right!
Everyone loves FPV!
FridayFPV stuck and we started the company.
The idea was to make the best multi-rotors we could and make the experience of FPV and flying as enjoyable as we possibly could for the pilot.
We are now fortunate enough to have a loyal following of supporters in South Africa and an ever-expanding global following.