Fantastic Fly-In: MAKE’s Homegrown Drones Meetup is a Hit

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23BYheo0spY]

MAKE has a tradition: with each new issue, we organize a meetup to let our editors, contributors, and community discuss the projects and features published in its pages. With our Homegrown Drones issue release this week, we may have had our best gathering yet.

For the new issue we knew we’d need something bigger than normal for our get-together. Something where we and all our drone pilot and builder friends could fly and show off our machines. With that in mind, we arranged an offsite gathering at a drone-friendly Bay Area location, Paintball Jungle, and spread the word to come for fun, food and flying.

The meetup was a smash hit. Over 200 attendees came, many with their own aircraft. Families brought picnic baskets and blankets to watch the demonstrations like an old-fashioned air show. Printrbot’s Brook Drumm wowed everyone with a “Makey the Robot” styrofoam body mounted to his ELEV-8 multicopter. The Game of Drones team showed off their blast-proof airframes, 3D Robotics had Irises buzzing around, we saw demonstrations about high-altitude broadband antenna applications, discussed epic aerial videography, and more.

It was a phenomenal day and really showed the excitement these flying platforms have generated. We’ll do it again, and we’ll let you know when we do.