Who Is NIX Drones?
# Who Is NIX Drones?
NIX Drones is the personal adventure, photography and technology project of John “Nix” Nickolls, based in Staffordshire.
The name began with drones.
That was the spark.
A camera in the sky opened up a completely different way of seeing familiar places, journeys, landscapes and everyday adventures. But somewhere along the road, NIX Drones grew beyond flying.
It became a home for everything that sits around that same idea of exploration.
Drive it. Ride it. Fly it. Photograph it. Understand it. Remember it.
Today, NIX Drones brings together drones, campervan travel, mountain biking, photography, gadgets, engineering, road trips and the wonderfully unnecessary amount of technology that tends to follow Nix around.
More Than Drones
The name may say Drones, but NIX Drones was never meant to stay confined to the sky.
The project has gradually developed into three connected worlds.
SKY
This is where it began.
Drone flying, aerial photography, cinematic video and the simple thrill of seeing the landscape from an angle that most people never experience.
From carefully planned cinematic flights to spontaneous photographs captured on the road, SKY remains the original heartbeat of NIX Drones.
It is not about flying for the sake of flying.
It is about perspective.
Sometimes moving a camera a hundred feet upwards completely changes the story.
ROAD
Then there is Vanilla.
Vanilla is the NIX Volkswagen T6.1 campervan and one of the biggest characters in the story.
She is transport, accommodation, workshop, camera base, charging station, kitchen and occasionally a rolling electrical experiment.
ROAD follows journeys around Britain and across Europe, documenting campsites, landscapes, long-distance drives, campervan upgrades and the little moments that happen between destinations.
The road is often where the best stories begin.
A planned route changes.
A campsite appears.
The weather turns.
A mountain comes into view.
Someone says, “We might as well carry on.”
That is ROAD.
TRAIL
When the road ends, Torque takes over.
Torque is the NIX electric mountain bike, built for forest trails, gravel tracks, climbs and the sort of route that looks perfectly sensible on a map until you actually reach it.
TRAIL records rides, distances, climbs, equipment, photographs and adventures on two wheels.
The pace changes.
The technology becomes quieter.
The world gets closer.
And suddenly a journey measured in fifteen miles can contain just as much adventure as one measured in fifteen hundred.
The Machines Matter
There is another thread running through NIX Drones.
Machines.
Vehicles, cameras, drones, batteries, solar panels, chargers, bikes, electronics and anything containing enough buttons to require reading the manual.
Probably twice.
That interest did not appear by accident.
NIX Drones is shaped by a lifelong connection with engineering, transport and machinery, including Royal Navy engineering, haulage and professional driving.
There is something satisfying about understanding how things work.
Not simply owning them.
That is why NIX Drones often digs deeper.
How much solar energy did the campervan actually generate?
How long can the fridge run?
What tyre setup works best?
How far did the bike climb?
What settings created the photograph?
How did the journey really unfold?
Sometimes the answer becomes a story.
Sometimes it becomes a graph.
Occasionally it becomes both.
Photography Is The Common Language
Whether the camera is attached to a drone, an iPhone, an action camera or something more traditional, photography ties the whole project together.
A photograph can turn a normal journey into something worth remembering.
A road through Norway.
A campervan under a dramatic sky.
A bike resting beside a forest trail.
A drone looking back at the landscape it has just crossed.
The equipment matters, but the photograph matters more.
NIX Drones is ultimately about capturing those moments properly.
Not A Company. Not An Influencer Brand.
NIX Drones is not pretending to be a giant media company.
There is no boardroom.
There is no marketing department.
There is, however, quite a lot of charging cable.
NIX Drones is deliberately personal.
It is a digital journal built around real journeys, real equipment, real photographs and real experiences.
Things go wrong.
Plans change.
Equipment gets upgraded.
Routes get abandoned.
Weather refuses to cooperate.
Batteries behave strangely.
And those moments often become the best stories.
Because adventure rarely arrives perfectly edited.
The NIX Philosophy
There is no complicated mission statement.
It comes down to four words.
DRIVE · RIDE · FLY · EXPLORE
Take the road.
Take the trail.
Put the drone in the air.
Stop somewhere interesting.
Take the photograph.
Find out what is around the next corner.
And whenever possible:
SEE IT. FEEL IT.
That is NIX Drones.
Not simply a drone website.
Not simply a travel blog.
Not simply a collection of gadgets.
It is one person's evolving record of the world, seen from the road, the trail and the sky.
And there is still a lot of world left to explore.