All the parts of the Blast finally came together. I had finished the design a while back, but the guys at Lumenier still had to round up a servo and get a custom wound motor for the shooter made. There’s laser cut plastic sheet and delrin, and CNC’d carbon and…some thick light black material for the crescent opposite the motor. Plus, Tim developed a cool little PDB in the meantime that you can drop a Pololu onto, and that was added to the kit. All in all, it was a lot of pieces to assemble.

I got two kits, one for me and one to demo dogfights for Motherboard. The second one will return to Florida to be shown off at the Florida FPV meet the day the Motherboard video was to be released. I was a little nervous to build them up – we tested every aspect of the design thoroughly but I couldn’t help fearing I screwed up somehow. What if the barrel’s too big to fit, or maybe the servo arm won’t line up?

Fortunately it built up perfectly, everything slotting in just right. I did some product and build log shots as I assembled the kits, and they are beauties. I still can’t believe we made this (somewhat) complicated thing.

A quick word on the name. It took us a while to settle on one. We wanted to play down the military connotations of a DRONE THAT SHOOTS, so that ruled out Tommy (Gun), (Machine Gun) Kelly, AK450, and Goblin Gun (it looks like a goblin shark with its overbite). The name I REALLY wanted was Pepe le Pew Pew Pew, but even I knew that was too silly. Even sillier was ATOHFOH, or A Taste of Hell from on High, because I love MST3k. Tim liked Quadblaster but I didn’t. Walking down the street, the name Blisskrieg popped in my head. It was the perfect blend of blitzkrieg and that zenlike state of euphoria I get from fpv, but there was already a band with that name! I finally proposed Dogfighter and Blast, and Tim voted for Blast. I still wished I was writing the ‘Pew Pew Pew: Release’ blog post though.

The Motherboard shoot turned out to be quite the experience. We shot at the construction site of their new offices, which provided a perfect post apocalyptic backdrop for the dogfight. The space turned out to be more cramped than we had expected, so the flying had to be a tad cautious. Fortunately Ryan Gury of Dronekraft was on hand to fly the other Blast – it was a relief to have a skillful pilot on hand, what with 9" Graupners in a tight space with a film crew.

What no one had anticipated was the dust. So much dust. And once the two Blasts did a few laps of the space the dust was permanently airborne for the duration of the shoot. It couldn't have looked better if we'd trucked in fog machines, but we were all completely filthy by the time it was over. The final video turned out great, check it out below.

We finished by shooting Jason, the reporter, as he delivered the intro.