Nixa High School’s Drone Team, Team 2319 X, recently came out as the National Champions. Team 2319 X traveled to Batesville, Mississippi, on April 6th to compete with 86 other teams in the All-Service Drone National Championships.

   “It was the culmination of the drone season for us,” said Team 2319 X member and junior Dalton Jones. “It was 100-ish teams that qualified to attend a drone competition between the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines… [and the] Space Force. So [each] branch is battling it out for the title of drone national [champions].”

   With so many different branches and teams competing, the process of elimination takes time to narrow down the number of teams.

   “It’s like two days of competing,” Jones said. “[In] national competitions, you’ll compete your qualifiers on day one and day two, [then] you’ll finish qualifiers and do your finals. It’s a… [multiple day] process for… the whole season.”

   Each game is split into two sections, with 5 rounds to collect the most points. The first section is skills, where each member puts their specialty to the test.

   “In skills, you have a skills course you fly through- it’s like an obstacle course,” said Team 2319 X member and senior Andrew Durbin. “Basically, you get points for every obstacle that you do- go through it as many times as you can in a minute. And the second part to [skills] is autonomous. You write code to make the drone — so our code just has it go up around some of the obstacles and then land. You get points for taking off, doing all the obstacles and then landing.”

   The other section is teamwork, where there is a blackout curtain between the pilot and the drone, leaving it up to the observer to guide the pilot so that the given task can be completed. Tasks include moving a ball or bean bags to a specified location to earn or multiply points. 

   “It’s all just about points — you’re paired with another team to do that,” Durbin said. “[There are] five matches to accumulate the highest average score possible.”

  Team 2319 X, named after “Monsters Inc.” and given the X for the sharp sound and distinction, is split into specialties.

   “We have specific roles,” Jones said. “[I do] piloting, Durbin is my copilot and observer and [Faith Helterbrand] is our programmer. We can all kind of sub in to each role if we have to help. Helterbrand knows the most about coding. I know the most about piloting, and Durbin knows the most about observing. 

   Since the tournaments are split into multiple complex parts, the teams have to hone their skills until they can crush the competition.

   We did after-school practices over at the Snyder building office,” Team 2319 X member and freshman Faith Helterbrand said. “We would just decide what to work on for each day we went- like some days, Jones would work on skills, or he would work on the autonomous code, or the teamwork.”

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