Matthew Harmon began aeromodelling at age 11 watching videos by FlightTest on Youtube and began building his own RC planes from foam board. Matt attended Flite Fest in Ohio in July 2015 and was captivated by all aspects of the hobby. There he also saw his first FPV racing drone, bought a used one that was already built, and brought it home. He joined the local AMA club, Fayette Flyers, who put on SEFF every year, and met new friends there that were forming a new team for UAS4STEM at his local high school. Matt was chosen as the team pilot even though he was still in 8th grade. His team qualified in regionals and went to Nationals and placed 2nd our very first year. They revised their strategies and won the National Championship in 2017. As the older members moved on the following year, he became Team Captain and lead a new team of kids to another National Championship. After three years of competing, Matt stepped down from the competition as a team member and became the head coach of a brand new team, and unbelievably, his new team won UAS4STEM nationals in 2019 making 3 consecutive wins for Matt Harmon. Matt’s been racing drones competitively the whole time and has won a few MultiGP races, qualified in regionals, and won Tiny whoop Regional champion in 2017. This year, as a senior, Matt is giving back to the community by founding and leading a new drone racing team at the high school. It has been a long process to teach new kids to build and fly drones, starting on PC simulators, then indoor drones, building a real 5-inch racing drone themselves, and finally flying in local MultiGP races. Matt’s hobbies and passions with aeromodelling lead him to prefer leading teams and figuring out the process and workflow of a successful team effort more than the specific engineering tasks. His time as team Captain and Coach was his favorite, monitoring and improving all the components of our team effort, hardware, software, communication, and coordination. That is why he chose to major in Industrial and Systems engineering at Auburn University.
