December 6, 2021 

The Robowranglers are the 2021 Bell Drone Championship Winners! Dec. 4, the Robowranglers headed to the Bell Flight headquarters in Fort Worth to compete against the eight other teams that qualified for the championship that came from all over Texas, Michigan and Virginia. Each team was given a kit of parts, and they had to build a drone, land it, and complete various other tasks to score points. 

Each team got two chances to get the highest score possible, and the winner was determined by the highest single score. In their first run, the Robowranglers had a major failure when a piece of their land vehicle fell off mid-match and prevented them from scoring as high as they knew they could. At the end of the first round, they were ranked fifth out of the nine teams. 

The team was able to regroup and on their second run had the only perfect score of the event, which made them the champions! Bell Flight also had a surprise for the team and during the award ceremony: every student on the winning team will receive a Prusa Mini 3D printer. 

Drone Racing World Champion Alex Vanover was in attendance and announced that he would be choosing the best drone pilot to take to the testing area to train them on how to fly a drone that he races with. Robowranglers pilot Andy Shields was selected and got to have a personal lesson with the world champion. The opportunity was featured on Vanover's Instagram story, which has over 35k followers.