The gym at Great Brook School was transformed into a buzzing, whirring miniature airfield Saturday as 19 teams from Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts competed in New Hampshire’s First Aerial Drones Competition.   

The competition was co-sponsored by Great Brook and the Kearsarge School District. 

“We’re having an awesome day,” said Ethan Beausoleil, a seventh-grader from Bennington during Saturday’s competition. “So far, we placed overall 360 in skills. We’re hoping to get to 405 points.”

“We’re hoping for the teamwork trophy,” said Bodhi Allen, a seventh-grader from Antrim. “We still have the autonomous round coming up, so we’ll see.” 

At the end of the day, the three teams from Great Brook’s Drones Club all finished in the top eight, which qualified each to participate in the teamwork final round. The duo of Ethan and Bodhi, the “Mavericks,” won three of the eight trophies overall: the Excellence Award, Skills Champion and Teamwork Champion. The Mavericks’ point total for skills placed them fifth of over 400 teams in the World Skills middle school standings. 

“They are such a great group of kids, and they far exceeded any reasonable expectations on Saturday. It was an amazing day,” said coach Rick Mellin of Peterborough.

Mellin, who also coaches Great Brook’s Awesome Potatoes robotics team, started the drones club at the beginning of the 2023 school year. Aerial drone competitions are sponsored by the REC (Robotics Education and Competition) Foundation, which supports STEM education and workforce readiness programs for educators nationwide. In the United States, 400,000 students participate in REC programs every year. Drone competition goals include learning about drone mechanics, flight principles, programming and documentation, as well as improving communication skills and exposing students to drone- and robotics-related careers. 

Bodhi said his friend Ethan had talked him into coming to the new Drones Club last fall. 

“It’s really cool, and I love flying the drones. I usually do the flying for the team. There are a lot of evolving careers in drones,” Bodhi said.

Ethan said he has been passionate about drones for years.

“My dad got me a drone when I was little, and I have just loved it ever since,” he said. “Right after I got my first drone, I got it stuck in a tree, and it was up there for a week, and I had to throw a log at it to get it down. I’m way better at flying them now, and I have like five drones.” 

Club members  agrees  that “flying the drone” is their favorite part of the drones team, while “documentation,” or recording their process in their notebooks,  is probably the most-challenging part of the process. 

“The hardest part is definitely doing the notebook. We have to multi-task. We’re doing the coding and keeping a record at the same time, and we have to take breaks when we’re working to write everything down,” Bodhi said.

“We really want to focus on flying and coding. There’s not always enough time to also do the notebook, but they want to see our thought process, ” Ethan said. 

“Actual pilots have to write everything down. It helps them find planes when they get lost,” Bodhi said. 

As the teams practiced last Tuesday prior to the competition, they explained how airflow from the building’s HVAC system could influence the tiny drones, with even a waft of air conditioning sending a drone off course. Mellin pointed out that the team had temporarily blocked off the ventilation shaft in the ceiling of the practice room. 

Quinn Lake of Hancock said the hardest thing is figuring out how to write the code that will enable the autonomous drone to fly consistently. At Tuesday’s practice, the team was talking about writing code to have the drones fly backwards. 

Judges at Saturday’s competition included Greenfield Police Chief Brian Giammarino, who is also a pilot. 

“This is great these kids are getting this experience. There are so many uses for drones, now, including in policing,” Giammarino said. “They’re even being used in this region, to help keep us safe. There are just all kinds of career options open to these kids with these skills.” 

The Great Brook Drones Club is raising money to head to the national middle school drone championship in Chattanooga, Tenn., in May.  For information about the REC Foundation aerial drone programs, go to robotevents.com/robot-competitions/adc.