How do drone meetups work?

[supersmay]

Me and a friend are starting a drone club at our university, and have been planning out how the whole thing is going to work. We would like to have at least a few meetups for people to attend and fly together, but we want to avoid any collisions or other conflicts. Unfortunately neither of us have had the time to attend any other real meetups which would probably be quite helpful. We are going to require that everyone flying has a TRUST certificate and a good understanding of how to operate a drone, but obviously even with experienced pilots having multiple drones in the area has a risk of collisions. I was considering assigning everyone an altitude and ensuring that the airspace above the landing zone remains clear, but I was wondering if more knowledgeable pilots had any thoughts on this subject.

 

[mavic3usa]

You can attend these meet-up virtually if that helps:

 

[Cafguy]

Are we talking a drone club only for camera drones?
If not then really nothing in your above plan besides the trust card rule, has any hope of working. Us FPVer's want to power loop and race gaps. If you have a combo of FPV and Camera Drone you might make an agreement not to Buzz the Camera drone or something, But a good club will have friendly members who respect one another and their property so you may have less of a problem than you think.

 

[supersmay]

You can attend these meet-up virtually if that helps:

I will definitely look at these, thank you!

 

[supersmay]

Are we talking a drone club only for camera drones?
If not then really nothing in your above plan besides the trust card rule, has any hope of working. Us FPVer's want to power loop and race gaps. If you have a combo of FPV and Camera Drone you might make an agreement not to Buzz the Camera drone or something, But a good club will have friendly members who respect one another and their property so you may have less of a problem than you think.

Yeah, I should have specified that it will primarily be camera drones, at least for now. FPV is going to be something we had planned to include more in the future, but I intend to connect with more experienced FPV pilots to help plan that out better because my FPV experience is not substantial enough to be super helpful for FPV flyers. I have done it but I’ve only flown DJI FPV quads which I know are very much not the typical FPV racing quads.

 

[TonyPHX]

I like the idea of meet-up and meeting fellow drone enthusiasts. What I would not want to be a part of is people that are operating on different levels of safety instruction etc. Clear procedures around take-off, landing and area of operations should all be defined before anyone even turns on a controller.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Why not take a trip to the nearest RC model airplane club and see how they run things ? Although they might be a bit to regimented for some peoples tastes.

 

[Moozer]

I've been to multiple drone meetups, and have found that no one wants to lose their drones to mid-air collisions. We always are flying from nearby other pilots, so we just announce when we are taking off or landing, and keep an eye out for each other the rest of the time. So long as everyone follows basic courtesy, there should not be any problems.