Behind The FPV Goggles: MATTYSTUNTZ

Drone Racing and FPV Freestyle are some of the fastest-growing sports in the world. Meet the men and women behind the goggles, who are changing the way we see our planet. Matty Stuntz is not only one of the biggest FPV freestyle drone pilots in Canada... but also in the world. Kendall Mark went to Vancouver to meet with Matty to get an amazing freestyle aerial from one of their biggest bridges and learn more about the man behind the goggles. Find out why Matty flies backward and what his secret talent is in this episode of Behind the Goggles. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Kendall Mark: Drone racing and FPV Freestyle are some of the fastest-growing sports in the world. Meet the men and women behind the googles who are changing the way we see our planet. We caught up with Matt Augustine, aka MattyStuntz in [00:00:30] his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. The self-described Canadian who does weird tricks showed us how it's done under the Poor Man's Bridge. I want to know why you decided you wanted to fly backwards because that's not instinctual. Matt Augustine: I was flying for about nine months and it got to the point where I was getting bored with the tricks I was doing, so I just trapped myself in the sim over wintertime and it just snowballed into this inverted, upside [00:01:00] down mayhem. Kendall Mark: Because of Vancouver's rainy winters, Matty spends a lot of time in the sim or simulator, but he doesn't mind. After all, passion, bordering obsession has always driven him in life. Matt Augustine: I get depressed if I'm not doing the thing that I want to do, so if it was riding motorcycles or if it was flying quads, I get into ... I turn into this quiet, horribly miserable person and I just ... All I think about is actually going and doing it, right? In the wintertime here, if I can't do it, you have to find that crutch and the [00:01:30] crutch for me here for FVPing is the sim. Kendall Mark: Your background, we talked about it, tell them about it. Matt Augustine: Background in which sense? Kendall Mark: In the extreme sports sense. The, I'm having a hard time even just standing here because my body's so broken. Matt Augustine: Yeah, so I mean, since I was a little kid I've always been energetic and always wanted to do things that were scary. What I thought was fun, but other people thought was scary. Eight years ago, now, I started to ride motorcycles [00:02:00] and do the motorcycle freestyle stuff. I did that for the longest time and got to a pretty advanced level of riding, but I mean, through all the things, hockey, football, rugby, skiing, rollerblading, riding motorcycles, it's taken a toll on my body, so this was the next hobby I was going to get into, so I could steer away from that and focus on something that's not going to damage myself. Kendall Mark: Right, it'll just damage your quad. Matt Augustine: Exactly, and my ego [00:02:30] every time I crash. Kendall Mark: It's interesting to me because coming from ... Yes, it was a freestyle sort of thing, but a very race-centric sport to me that you're not more into the racing side of things. Matt Augustine: Well, I mean, I am. I would love to race more, but I mean, just from my artistic background and musician background and just everything I've always naturally gone into, it's always been freestyle, right? With this, I can express emotion that I have [00:03:00] and it comes from deep down and it's not just racing a track and learning a track and getting fast, right? For me, creating is way more important than just going out there and being the fastest. Kendall Mark: Music background? You didn't say anything about that. Matt Augustine: I come from a musical family. I think my great granddad on my dad's side, who is Trinidadian, made a living as a musician and two of my uncles play guitar, my dad [00:03:30] plays guitar and it didn't hit me when I was in high school, I picked it up when I was 21, I picked up a guitar, but it was one of those things too, where I became obsessed about it. I played it eight hours a day and I think it's a gene deep down in there just coming from a musical family, but I picked it up pretty quick. Kendall Mark: I do music and I see notes in my head. When I'm singing it, I see it in my head. When you are flying, especially if you're listening to music while you're flying, do you see ... Do you ever see that? Do you get what [00:04:00] I'm saying? Matt Augustine: Absolutely, and it's absolutely turned into a spiritual, deep down spirit thing where it's coming from that musical side and I truly believe it. The artistic side where I do have a lot of fun with it and I've gotten to the point where I can do all the tricks can I do pretty much every time, so it's ... I had a music teacher, jazz music teacher that said that technique was the most important thing for a musician because [00:04:30] if your fingers can't keep up to what's in your mind, then you can't express yourself in a musical solo and that's the same with flying. I just like going to a spot and just being one with the environment and then when ... Everyone know that flies and if you don't know, when you put on the goggles, you're one, you're the quad and having those two combinations where you're in the environment and you can be Superman [00:05:00] or a bird and do whatever you want, it totally just ... It's just the vibe of everything, right?