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First Manned Aerobatic RACING Drone – Will it FLIP? ????

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A giant multirotor built to carry a human pilot just pulled off loops and rolls in Croatia.

Drone Champions AG, the company behind the Drone Champions League (DCL), has unveiled what it calls the world’s first manned aerobatic racing drone. Nicknamed the “Big Drone,” the machine is a prototype for a future racing series where human pilots — not remote operators — sit inside the aircraft. RC channel Flite Test traveled to Europe to document the build and the flight testing firsthand for its video “First Manned Aerobatic RACING Drone – Will it FLIP?”

• The aircraft runs 12 coaxial motors and 24 batteries, giving it enough redundant lift to carry a single occupant in an open cockpit.
• Testing began indoors in Germany before the team moved outdoors to Vrsar, Croatia, to attempt aerobatic maneuvers including loops and rolls.
• DCL founder and CEO Herbert Weirather personally strapped into the cockpit during ground-controlled flight tests, while champion pilot Mirko Cesena flew the aerobatics from a standard RC transmitter on the ground.

From Indoor Prototype to Outdoor Aerobatics

The Big Drone didn’t start its life doing loops. Drone Champions AG first ran the multirotor through controlled indoor testing in Germany, where the engineering team could fine-tune the 12-motor coaxial layout and the flight controller’s response before risking anything more dramatic. Once that groundwork was solid, the operation shifted outdoors to Vrsar on Croatia’s Istrian coast — open airspace where the drone could actually be pushed through the maneuvers it was designed for.

That distinction matters for anyone who’s tinkered with multirotor builds themselves: a frame that hovers cleanly in a warehouse doesn’t automatically survive a loop in open air with wind and full-scale mass working against it. It’s the same incremental logic RC builders use scaling up drivetrains and power systems on much smaller rigs, like the process Flite Test has documented while installing a Micro V4 engine on an RC car — get the small-scale mechanics right before you trust the machine with anything higher-stakes.

Ground Control, Human Cargo

The single-seat cockpit is the whole point of the project. Rather than being autonomously flown or piloted from inside, the Big Drone was controlled the way any racing multirotor is: through a ground-based RC transmitter, with the pilot’s job for now being to simply ride along. That’s exactly the setup Herbert Weirather used when he climbed into the cockpit himself during the Croatia tests, letting the drone lift him off the ground under someone else’s control to prove the airframe could safely carry a human passenger.

Mirko Cesena, a champion pilot within DCL’s ranks, handled the aerobatics from the transmitter — sending the 12-motor rig through loops and rolls while cameras rolled. It’s a deliberate sequencing: prove the frame can carry weight and survive inverted flight before anyone tries flying it from the inside.

The world’s first manned aerobatic racing drone flew loops and rolls over Vrsar, Croatia — with its pilot in the cockpit, but the controls still on the ground.

Scouting Pilots Through a Video Game

Drone Champions AG timed the Big Drone reveal to coincide with the February 18, 2020 launch of “DCL – The Game,” a title the company intends to use as a scouting and training pipeline for future manned multirotor racing. The logic is straightforward: before you can trust someone in the cockpit of a 12-motor aircraft, you want to know they can handle the reflexes and spatial awareness that drone racing demands, and a simulator is a far cheaper place to find that out than open airspace in Croatia.

It’s the same instinct that’s driven a wave of manned personal flight projects to lean on simulation and remote control before committing to live human pilots, not unlike how outfits building machines such as the first-ever hoverbike have had to prove airframe stability well before a rider takes manual control.

Future Prospects for Large Drones

Right now, the Big Drone is still a proof-of-concept — a 12-motor, 24-battery airframe that has shown it can carry a person and survive aerobatic loading, but not yet one that a pilot flies from inside the cockpit. Drone Champions AG’s stated goal is a full manned multirotor racing series, and “DCL – The Game” is the mechanism they’re using to build a roster of pilots capable of eventually taking the stick themselves. Whether that jump — from ground-controlled passenger flights in Vrsar to a pilot actually steering the thing through a loop — happens this year is the question DCL still has to answer.