New Orleans gains permanent drone race course in Avondale

New Orleans finally has a local drone race course to call its own, and the bigger story is access. Kelly Field in Avondale sits on the west bank of the Mississippi River, about 20 minutes from central New Orleans, giving FPV pilots a permanent layout where they can repeat laps, bring newcomers to watch and build a real racing scene without making every session a road trip.

That matters because the field is not starting from scratch. New Orleans Model Aviation Club, also known as NOMAC, says Kelly Field was established in the 1980s and has since “adapted with the technology and culture.” The site now includes designated areas for airplanes, helicopters, boats and FPV multirotor racing, which puts drone racing inside a broader model aviation setup rather than treating it as a one-off attraction.

The Academy of Model Aeronautics lists Kelly Field at Avondale Garden Rd. in Westwego, with 24/7 field hours and amenities that make the site workable for more than casual flying. The field includes a spectator area, safety fences, startup stands, workbenches, electricity and a gated entrance. Those details matter in drone racing, where a permanent course can turn a scattered hobby into a routine: pilots can tune quads, test batteries, learn gate discipline and come back to the same lines until they are running them cleanly.

The local course also gives Gulf Coast pilots a clearer path into the wider competitive ladder. New Orleans Model Aviation points visitors toward MultiGP, which describes itself as the world’s largest professional drone racing league and says it has more than 30,000 registered pilots and 500 active chapters worldwide. That is the kind of network a local field can feed into, especially for pilots who want more than practice and want structured competition.

Kelly Field already has a race result on its resume. MultiGP says the venue hosted the 3rd Mayhem Dawn to Dusk Team Race on April 6-7, 2019, with 61 pilots on 8 teams flying 5,690 laps in the world’s first 12-hour enduro-style relay FPV race. The event covered an estimated 1,786 miles and used about 1,978 batteries, a reminder that this patch of west-bank land can support serious racing volume when the format calls for it.

For New Orleans, the value of the new course is not just that races can happen there. It is that the city now has a stable home base where practice, onboarding and competition can grow together, giving local pilots a place to enter the sport and stay in it.