York College of PA Engineering Student Earns Third Place in National Drone Racing Competition
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York College of PA Engineering Student Earns Third Place in National Drone Racing Competition
May 05, 2022York College’s Alex Suarez, a sophomore Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering major from Frederick, Md., earned a third-place finish in the 2022 Collegiate Drone Racing Championship (CDRC) at the University of North Dakota. Eleven colleges and universities competed, including the University of North Dakota, Emory-Riddle Aeronautical University, Virginia Tech, Northeastern University, the U.S. Air Force Academy, Purdue University, and the University of Maryland. His participation was sponsored by the Engineering departments at York College.
“It felt really cool representing York, all these big schools and here I am racing at the same level,” said Suarez. “For all other sports our schools would never compete. Drone racing is still new enough in which schools are not picking pilots, pilots are picking the school.”
The race was scored on an individual level and a school/team level. The minimum number of pilots per team is two, according to Suarez. “However, as an individual, I got York into 8th out of 11 teams. There were only two individual teams – York and Purdue. If York were to get more drone racing pilots, we would be even more competitive on the team level.”
Ever since his first Blue Angels airshow, Suarez has been hooked on aviation. He began with flying model planes in 2012, then moved on to quadcopters because “I could keep it in the air and control it much better than a model plane.” Quadcopters are drones that fly using four rotors.
Suarez flew quadcopters