Your Drone Show

About the author

Thabo Mokoena

Fleet choreographer and ground-station operator, Your Drone Show

Thabo has flown light displays since the early two-person wedding jobs in the Cape Winelands, back when a 30-drone show meant loading every aircraft into a single bakkie and hoping the wind window held until the first dance. Since then he has built and re-timed sequences for corporate activations, festival slots and stadium precincts, and he writes most of the teardown notes you will find on this blog.

His day-to-day work sits between Skybrush timelines and the paperwork nobody enjoys: geofencing, CAA Part 101 submissions, RF channel scans on crowded sites, and battery rotation schedules that keep a fleet of a hundred or more units in the air without grounding anyone mid-show. If a post here mentions a firmware quirk or a prop-wash problem on a coastal night, it is because it cost him a rehearsal.

Fleet experience
30 to 300 aircraft
Tools
Skybrush, Blender
Focus
SA airspace, pyro-free shows

Field notes from shows that actually flew

Three write-ups from recent gigs, sorted by the problem they solve. Each one is a teardown: what we planned, what the site did to those plans, and the settings or paperwork we changed afterwards.

All posts Choreography Compliance RF and links
Drone light formation glowing above a vineyard at night during a wedding display

Choreography

Choreographing a 30-Drone Wedding Show in Skybrush

The brief was simple on paper: thirty drones, six minutes, one vineyard, no pyro. In practice the sequence had to survive a narrow launch corridor, a guest marquee directly under the flight path, and a wind window that closed around 21:40. This post walks through the Skybrush timeline as it was actually built, including the two transitions that had to be re-timed after the rehearsal because the drones were arriving at their waypoints a full second early. It also covers the ground-station setup, the backup laptop that saved the show, and what the client asked for afterwards that we would price differently next time.

Read the teardown
Stadium floodlights and night sky above a large outdoor venue

Compliance

CAA Part 101 Paperwork for a Stadium Show

Part 101 is the starting point, not the whole story. For a stadium show you are also dealing with the venue's own safety officer, the local municipality, the event's public liability insurer and, in some cases, the broadcast crew who want a clean RF window. This post lists the documents we prepare in order, the lead times that have actually held up across three stadium gigs, and the two clauses that clients routinely try to move onto the operator. It also notes where the rules differ between an enclosed stadium and a harbour front where the public can walk underneath the display volume.

Read the teardown
Radio antenna and signal equipment silhouetted against a night sky

RF and links

RF Channel Planning When the Site Is Full of Wi-Fi

A city-centre activation taught us more about 2.4 GHz than any lab test. The rehearsal at 06:00 was flawless; the 20:00 show had two drones lagging their waypoints by a quarter second. This post covers the pre-show spectrum scan we now run as standard, how we pick between the available channels, and why the ground station's position relative to the crowd matters more than its position relative to the fleet. There are also notes on what to do mid-show if the link quality drops, and the one setting in the ground station we no longer trust.

Read the teardown

Keep reading

Notes from the flight line

Three posts that pair with whatever you came here for: a small wedding build, the stadium paperwork stack, and the RF problems that only appear once the crowd shows up.

Field teardown

Choreographing a 30-Drone Wedding Show in Skybrush

Six minutes over a Cape Winelands vineyard, with a guest marquee sitting right under the flight path and a wind window that shut at 21:40.

Read the teardown

Compliance

CAA Part 101 Paperwork for a Stadium Show

The documents we prepare in order for a 300-aircraft display, the lead times that held up, and the clauses clients try to push onto the operator.

See the workflow

Link reliability

RF Channel Planning When the Site Is Full of Wi-Fi

A clean 06:00 rehearsal, a messy 20:00 show, and the pre-show spectrum scan we now run before every city-centre activation.

Read the notes

Also worth a look: crew and client reviews from past displays.

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