Workshops and Meetups

If you enjoy costly crashes, burning cash, and wearing handcuffs you should start droning all alone!

Don’t have extra cash to burn? Don’t like handcuffs? Here are four things you can do to save yourself a lot of money, trouble, and time:

1. Don’t just read the quick start guide. It’s NOT as easy as the marketing (or maybe even friends) have to lead you to believe. Download the latest manual for your drone, read it in full, and then read it again! Then do the following:
2. Attend a Northern New England Drone User Group (NNEDUG) workshop or meetup and join the Facebook Group. Most of the meetups are free and you’ll learn a lot of critical information, skills, and procedures which are not touched upon in the manuals or easily found on YouTube. NNEDUG members freely share their experiences and many tips which can help you avoid costly crashes. There are also a few laws and no-fly zones you need to be aware of. For example, did you know the Vermont Air National Guard routinely flies below 400′ and they’re going so fast you can’t hear them coming? Don’t be a dangerous douche! Please attend a meetup to find out the critical and essential things you need to know before flying.
3. Flight Workshops are held throughout the year and are listed here among our other upcoming workshops. We also offer Private Drone Photography Workshops through our sister company, Vermont Photo Tours.
4. Buy an Inexpensive and Easily Repairable Toy Drone to learn how to fly and practice with it before flying anything else! They’re built to take the abuse of learning and can survive most crashes, unlike way more expensive photography drones.

Don’t believe friends who say they didn’t crash at first. They’re either exaggerating, the luckiest person you know, or they had hands-on help from Drone User Group members or someone else equally experienced.

Start with an Inexpensive and Easily Repairable Toy Drone

Unfortunately, no drone is crash proof or as easy to fly as the marketing leads everyone to believe. It actually takes at least 10 hours of practice to learn basic flying skills and orientation control. Everyone crashes very frequently while learning these skills. So you don’t want to be flying an expensive repair photography drone. Instead, buy a toy drone that flies very similar to larger drones but doesn’t have enough weight or inertia to break anything, or itself, and is made to survive these beginner crashes.

We sell several inexpensive great practice/training drones that can take most crashes like a champ. Spare parts are readily available and it’s cheap and easy to repair if you should break something. Everything you learn while flying with one of these will be directly applicable to larger drones.

You will need/want at least four spare batteries and you can get multipacks from us. Beware, don’t buy a drone or batteries from Amazon or eBay as both sites are mostly offering crudely-made counterfeits and fakes.

Please also see Beginner Hints, Tips, and Troubleshooting for Practice Drones/Quadcopters and Tiny Whoops.