National drone competition coming to Medicine Hat in May

“The last number of years, it’s gone to Alma, Quebec, which is interesting because that’s the eastern counterpart to what we have right here with the Foremost UAS test range. That’s the eastern version of what we have here,” Hassel said.

“With this going to Quebec every year, we started asking ourselves in conversations with our friends in Foremost, why can’t we host that here? Why is that not in Alberta? I mean, shouldn’t this alternate east-west or something similar,” he added.

“We started having conversations with Aerial Evolution about what it would take to bring this to Alberta, and after a number of conversations, we finally get our opportunity this summer.”

One hundred fifty students from 15 post secondary institutions across the country are expected to compete.

Building drones from scratch prior to the competition, and making the necessary tweaks, while creating flight algorithms to make sure that the drone can operate and be controlled successfully.

Haessel said there is a strong local industry for drones in Medicine Hat.

“There have actually been more drones built and manufactured in Medicine Hat than any other city in Canada,” Haessel said.

“Most people in Medicine Hat don’t know that, and people across the country don’t know that, but we’ve got a great story to tell, a great little industry, and a lot of opportunity for growth,” he added.

“Bringing the talent to Medicine Hat to see the community and to fly drones is a huge economic development opportunity. We’re really excited about this. You never know. Medicine Hat is historically and currently known as the Gas City, but maybe one of these days it’ll be known as the Drone City.”

Haessel said this will be a great way to showcase the city, to potentially have these students move here to work for the local sector.

He adds one of the big challenges with a competition like this is the space required.

“We are talking about student teams building, flying and performing acts that are sometimes of an experimental in nature. We have to be careful with safety and also regulations. So you can’t do anything like that really close to an airport, you can’t have a lot of buildings or people around just because there is always the potential that something goes off. We wanted to make sure it was absolutely safe,” Haessel said.

“We did find in talking to the Medicine Hat RCers, a local model aircraft club, they use a field out just west of town off Box Springs Road, which is an airfield that they do their flying and their competitions at, and we started talking to them and they were open to the idea,” he added.

“Foremost with their expertise and skills in regulatory matters and all matters of safety, did a site assessment for us and determined that that would be an appropriate site and we could do it safely and get all the appropriate Transport Canada approvals.”

Haessel said that hosting in Foremost had been considered.

“The challenge is 150 students coming in from across the country. We just didn’t have the nearby housing and infrastructure to do it there,” Haessel said.

“Fortunately, we were able to find a site just outside of Medicine Hat.”

Haessel adds that winning the bid for this event wouldn’t have been possible without the local industry and sponsor support.

by Jesse Gill

National drone competition coming to Medicine Hat in May

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