Race Manager: Registration now open to all pilots

Short and sweet: the Race Manager is now open to all pilots. You can register, sign up for races straight from your phone and get a push notification on race day when it is your turn to fly or spot. Organising shared events gets a good deal easier – and this post walks you through what to expect.

What the Race Manager is

If you have ever clicked Race Manager in the navigation above, you have already seen it: our own tournament management platform for FPV races at racemanager.fpvooe.com. Built for the projector at live events – Synthwave look included – it carries a race from the first heat all the way to the podium:

• Double elimination: qualification, then winner and loser brackets up to the grand finale. Lose a heat and you drop into the loser bracket – everyone gets a second chance.
• Automatic heat assignment into heats of three or four pilots, supporting 6 to 60 pilots.
• The bracket live on screen: zoom, pan, and follow individual pilots through the tournament with the pilot-path view.
• Channels in plain sight: Raceband channels (R1, R3, R6, R8) sit as badges right inside the bracket – with an optimisation that keeps pilots on their previous channel whenever possible, saving video-transmitter swaps between heats.
• Results and export: placements, optional lap times, a podium screen and CSV export.

And the Race Manager was deliberately not built just for us: races can be set up for the communities FPVOOE, fpvsalzburg and WhoopRaceWien.

New: register, sign up, race

Until now, admins have entered the roster by hand. That changes: all pilots can now create their own account – and race sign-up comes with it.

Here is how it works:

1. Create an account: enter a display name, email address and password – that takes less than a minute. Afterwards you have to confirm your email address: without the link from the verification email you cannot log in – that keeps the roster clean. Heads-up so you don’t go searching: that email unfortunately ends up in the spam folder most of the time. If it does not arrive right away: open the spam folder, tap the link, done.
2. Set up your profile: upload an avatar and add your Instagram handle, and you will recognise everyone at a glance in the bracket.
3. Sign yourself up: as soon as the admins open registration for a race, every registered pilot receives an „registration open” push notification. On the race page you tap Join – and as long as the window is open you can still Leave again.

No participant lists that someone has to maintain. No „who is racing?” comment threads. Open the window once, and pilots sign themselves up.

On race day: your phone is your race HQ

On race day all you need is your phone. The live race page shows the tournament bracket in real time – it updates the moment a result is entered, and it zooms and pans just fine on a small screen.

The centrepiece for pilots is the floating “you’re up” indicator on the live page:

• Red, „Achtung, du bist dran”: your heat is running right now.
• Orange, „Nächste Runde bist du dran”: your heat is next.
• Green, „In N Runden bist du dran”: you still have some time.

Your Raceband channel sits right next to it as a badge. A second line shows your spotting duty – who you are backing up next: from „Jetzt spottest du [R3]” to „In 2 Runden spottest du ”. And the rotation forgets nobody: eliminated pilots keep spotting until the grand finale is queued.

On top of that, „Meine Rennen” (my races) keeps your personal history with participations, flown heats and podium finishes – and the public leaderboard, cups and pilot pages are visible to everyone.

Push notifications: your phone calls you

So you do not have to stare at a screen all day, push notifications keep you informed – strictly opt-in, activated on your profile page. There are five of them:

• „Rennen gestartet” (race started) – the tournament begins.
• „Nächste Runde bist du dran” – your heat is next.
• „Jetzt bist du dran” – time to put the goggles on.
• „Jetzt spottest du” – the heat you are spotting is active.
• „Anmeldung geöffnet” – a new race is open for registration.

Tapping a notification opens the race directly. You can toggle the categories individually, and the setting applies account-wide to all your devices (up to five). The test notification shows you within seconds whether everything arrives on your device.

The „Anmeldung geöffnet“ notification combined with the installed app is especially valuable: as soon as we or one of the communities – FPVOOE, fpvsalzburg or WhoopRaceWien – opens registration for a new race, the message lands on your phone automatically. You no longer have to check whether something new is coming up – you simply hear about it.

Important for iOS: push notifications on iOS only work inside the installed home-screen app. Installing takes half a minute: open Safari, tap the Share icon, choose „Add to Home Screen“, confirm – done. On Android, open the three-dot menu in Chrome and pick „Install app“. Once the app is installed and push is activated, new races and your calls arrive straight on your phone.

And we stay honest about it: whether and how loudly your device rings and vibrates in the end is still up to the operating system. If you want to be absolutely sure, keep the live page open on race day.

What this means for shared events

The real gain lies in how it all works together. Putting on a race involves a lot of surrounding organisation – and that is exactly what shrinks now:

• No more shouting across the room. Instead of announcements or messages in five chat groups, every pilot knows when they fly and when they spot. Events get calmer and faster.
• Less prep work for admins. Registration collects itself, the roster fills itself via the join button. Guests without an account remain possible.
• Fewer channel changes. The channel optimisation keeps pilots on their channel – fewer VTX swaps means fewer pauses between heats.
• Spotting that nobody has to plan. The rotation distributes spotting duties automatically and fairly across all pilots – including the eliminated ones.
• Small races too. Because registration just needs to be opened and every registered pilot hears about it via push, small throwdown races are just as easy to set up as big events.
• Nothing is lost. Results, race history and the leaderboard stay stored, and CSV export is available for public races.

How it all works: our video

Jakob explains how the Race Manager works in this video (in German):

Register now – it takes less than a minute

1. Open racemanager.fpvooe.com/register.
2. Create your account: display name, email address and a password of at least 12 characters. Then confirm the verification link in your email – and if it does not arrive: check your spam folder, it unfortunately lands there most of the time.
3. On your profile page, upload an avatar, add your Instagram handle and activate push notifications. The test notification instantly shows whether everything arrives.
4. Install the Race Manager on your phone as an app – on iOS from Safari via Share → „Add to Home Screen”, on Android via Chrome → „Install app”.
5. Wait for the next „registration open” notification and join the race.

Register now and you will be in from the start at the next race – with the live bracket on your phone and a push notification telling you when you are up. If you have questions, join us on Discord – we are happy to help!