The History of Cuta-Copter
In 2004, business founder Gary McDonogh established Hobby Centre, a traditional radio control store. By 2010, quadcopter (drones) started becoming popular and after 30 years of flying and building RC aircraft, the business was building many types of drones.
In 2014, the decision was taken to start building an entry level fishing drone to compete against the traditional freshwater bait boat. This was called the African Quadcopter.
Soon customers were asking for a drone to use for saltwater fishing and that is when the Cuta-Copter was born. Cuta-Copter is a hybrid name from “Barracouta and Quadcopter”.
In 2015, we improved the design and invented the use of a shoebox vacuum formed frame. The Cuta-Copter Revo MK1 started selling.
Due to certain parts being discontinued, we had to re-design the drone and so we came up with the Revo 2 in 2016.
The Revo 2 was our first attempt at waterproofing a drone, but this proved exceedingly difficult, so we dropped that in favour of a new design the REVO3.
The Revo3 went on to become a best seller and from this point the fishing market in South Africa exploded. There were new entrants and even imitators of our ideas.
To improve things further, we designed the big lifter the REVO 4 and the smaller more efficient Matrix. These 2 drones became top sellers and even out stripped the Revo 3 sales.
At the end of 2019, our customers were asking for water proofing again and a camera. So the Ex1 was designed.
During 2020 the Covid situation caused havoc with suppliers and parts availability and business operations were significantly affected. Fortunately, we weathered the storm and introduced the famous Pixhawk flight controllers into all our products. Using Pixhawk auto-pilots has proven to be the best decision for flight safety, user features, drone stability and client confidence.
We will continue to evolve our designs to suit customers word-wide. During 2020 we expanded our international network to Australia, New Zealand, Greece, and Israel with new countries joining in 2021.
As a small business it has been a challenge to meet world and local demand, however the company continues to expand to meet the needs of anglers all over.
We hope that you like our products and appreciate all feedback.