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Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, brings in his drone after a flight around the track before the start of racing at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely.
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, flies a drone around the track to create some beauty shots of Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely that will be broadcast on DIRTVision racing television on Friday, June 24, 2022. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, prepares one of his FPV (first-person view) drones for a flight around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely on Friday, June 24, 2022. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, looks over the the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely as the track is prepared for a night of racing on Friday, June 24, 2022. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, flies a drone around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely on Friday, June 24, 2022. The footage he shoots is used by DIRTVision racing television to give a unique perspective to viewers watching at home. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, prepares to launch one of his drones for a flight around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely on Friday, June 24, 2022. The goggles on his head help him control and fly his FPV (first-person view) drone as he follows the race cars around the track. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, prepares one of his FPV (first-person view) drones for a night of covering racing at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely on Friday, June 24, 2022. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
COLLINSVILLE — Ian Maue chases race cars.
The 20-year-old from Collinsville launched his business, Metro East Drone Aerials, after his first semester of college. He’s paying for school by tailing stock cars with his tiny aircrafts, producing snippets of video that give a bird’s-eye survey of the high-octane sport.
“It’s a new view that hasn’t been around racing,” Maue says. “It’s just something that people are eager to see.”
The drone-service industry has taken off since the Federal Aviation Administration’s 2016 rule opened the skies to quadcopter entrepreneurs and hobbyists. The compact flyers have become easier to customize and control. Cameras are sharper. Battery life is longer. And experienced operators, like Maue, are showing the range of industries they can serve. The worldwide commercial drone market is expected to surpass $500 billion in revenue by 2028 from less than $21 billion last year, according to Grand View Research.
Maue was in middle school when an uncle gave him his first toy drone. When he was 17 — aided by a YouTube tutorial, a 3D printer and pocket money from a part-time job — Maue spent two months building one from scratch.
For 10 incredible seconds, it hovered obediently. Then, his baby crashed.
“Then I started to get serious about it,” Maue says. He experimented with different configurations of motors, propellers and camera systems and earned his FAA license.
A first-person view drone piloted by Ian Maue comes in for a landing after chasing a race car around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely.
Through a friend, he learned about drones’ expansion into car racing — where they could capture the skidding drifts, near-misses and hold-your-breath hits from multiple viewpoints. The professional racing circuit added drones to its TV coverage in 2016 and ramped up use three years later.
Maue decided to start small.
In January 2021, he approached Tammy Gundaker, who owns Tri-City Speedway near Granite City with her husband. In the offseason, the Gundakers host go-kart races at a horse barn in Lake Saint Louis.
“He walked in, introduced himself and said, ‘I’m new to this. I’m trying to get my feet wet,’” Gundaker recalls.
Those first go-kart shots were a little unpolished: The barn’s roof limited the drone’s elevation, and Maue was using an analog signal, which is prone to interference. But the effort showed him the possibilities.
A first-person view drone, seen in the upper right corner of the photo, piloted by Ian Maue follows a race car around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely.
“It was a learning experience,” Maue says. “It made me a better pilot.”
He built up his drone fleet to 17, cherry-picking all the components. Most of the drones have 5-inch frames and weigh less than a pound and a half. His fastest can top 130 mph.
“If you program it yourself, you can get it to do what you want,” he said. “If something breaks, you know how to fix it.”
Professional drone operators, like Maue, often favor first-person-view drones, which require more finesse to fly than recreational ones. Goggles let him see what the drone is seeing, but they also make for an almost-blind takeoff and landing.
By spring of last year, Maue was ready to try his hand at super late model races on the ³⁄8-mile track at Tri-City. The Gundakers hired him to produce videos they could push out on their social media channels. Fans were blown away — and so were drivers.
Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Illinois, grew up on a dirt track and has been touring professionally since 2018. He had never seen anything like the drone footage Maue sent him last summer of one of his races at Tri-City.
Activity at Tri-City Speedway's dirt track in Pontoon Beach, just north of Granite City in 2021. (Photo courtesy of Ian Maue/Metro East Drone Aerials)
The drone stalks the cars as they slalom around turns and nip at the boards. Their aluminum frames tremble. Dirt billows.
“I thought, man, that’s badass,’” Pierce says. “That’s a view you can only see in a video game or something.”
The whole thing lasts just a couple of minutes: The batteries flatline quickly. But Maue keeps a queue at the ready, sending a fresh drone up as soon as one peters out.
On race nights, Maue arrives at the track two to three hours early. He stakes out a spot where the grandstands won’t interfere with the signal, chitchats with the drivers, takes a couple of test flights. When he’s working for a streaming service, he routes a maze of adapters through a computer the size of a credit card.
“It gets technical pretty fast,” Maue says.
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, prepares to launch one of his drones for a flight around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely on Friday, June 24, 2022. The goggles on his head help him control and fly his FPV (first-person view) drone as he follows the race cars around the track. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
All the prep is worth it, says Michael Rigsby, a vice president at FloSports. The Austin, Texas-based streaming service began regularly hiring drone operators to cover motorsports three years ago.
“It truly gets one of the most positive reactions from subscribers of anything we do,” he says. “You really feel what the drivers are feeling.”
Eight hours of work yields about 30 minutes of footage from Maue. Early on, he charged $250 a day. Now, he makes twice that. He’s one of just a few independent operators in the United States staking out this niche, he says. It’s taken him to 20 tracks in more than a half-dozen states.
Drivers use the footage to review what went right and wrong during a competition. Drones have also opened up a new revenue source for them. Sponsors traditionally limited themselves to the hood or doors, but with the drone’s agility, every corner of the car is visible to fans.
Gordy Gundaker of St. Charles, the son of Tri-City’s owners, has been racing professionally on the national circuit since 2016. After he hired Maue, he gained three sponsors, emblazoned across the top of his firecracker-orange roof.
In the past decade, drones have become a commonplace tool in real estate, construction, mining, agriculture and law enforcement. Now, they are used for everything from delivering pizza and cleaning windows to tracking populations of endangered animals.
“There’s a tremendous opportunity for people who are looking to do jobs with drones,” says Michael Robbins of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade organization based in Washington. “As the technology evolves, it’s feeding the imagination of entrepreneurs.”
Xeo Air’s drones assess critical infrastructure and the aftermath of disasters. But CEO Bronwyn Morgan said St. Louis-based Xeo’s true purpose is analyzing data that couldn’t be gathered in any other way. The 3-year-old company recently won a $25,000 American Express grant to purchase equipment and improve its digital platform.
Rob Haller of south St. Louis County founded a video-production company, Haller Concepts, 40 years ago. He added drones to his fleet in 2014, providing overhead footage for homeowners putting their houses on the market. Now aerial jobs make up a quarter of his business. Haller has used them to take inventory at construction sites, uncover rooftop irregularities and livestream the grand opening of a Lion’s Choice.
“It’s a good market to be in,” Haller says. “It’s changing all our lives, for sure.”
As for Maue, he has jobs lined up every weekend through September. In the fall, he’s transferring to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to finish the last two years of his business degree. He started Metro East Drone Aerials as a college job. But he plans to try to make a go of it full-time after graduation.
“It just kind of spun out of control and never really slowed down,” Maue says. “I love every second of it.”
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Colleen Schrappen is a reporter at the Post-Dispatch.
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Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, brings in his drone after a flight around the track before the start of racing at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely.
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, flies a drone around the track to create some beauty shots of Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely that will be broadcast on DIRTVision racing television on Friday, June 24, 2022. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, prepares one of his FPV (first-person view) drones for a flight around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely on Friday, June 24, 2022. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
Activity at Tri-City Speedway's dirt track in Pontoon Beach, just north of Granite City in 2021. (Photo courtesy of Ian Maue/Metro East Drone Aerials)
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, looks over the the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely as the track is prepared for a night of racing on Friday, June 24, 2022. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, flies a drone around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely on Friday, June 24, 2022. The footage he shoots is used by DIRTVision racing television to give a unique perspective to viewers watching at home. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
A first-person view drone piloted by Ian Maue comes in for a landing after chasing a race car around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely.
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, prepares to launch one of his drones for a flight around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely on Friday, June 24, 2022. The goggles on his head help him control and fly his FPV (first-person view) drone as he follows the race cars around the track. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
A first-person view drone, seen in the upper right corner of the photo, piloted by Ian Maue follows a race car around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely.
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, prepares to launch one of his drones for a flight around the track at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely on Friday, June 24, 2022. The goggles on his head help him control and fly his FPV (first-person view) drone as he follows the race cars around the track. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
Ian Maue, an FAA licensed drone operator and owner of Metro East Drone Aerials, prepares one of his FPV (first-person view) drones for a night of covering racing at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely on Friday, June 24, 2022. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
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