For Teams | Your Drone Show

Clarifications

What this page does and does not cover

Teams arrive with different assumptions about what a drone display involves, so a few terms are worth pinning down before you read the scenarios below. These notes apply to every engagement described on this page.

Fleet size means aircraft in the air

When we quote a 30-drone or 300-drone show, that is the number flying in formation at peak. Spare units on the ground, charging or held as replacements, are counted separately and are not part of the display volume.

Pyro-free is a planning constraint

A drone display removes the fire risk and the fallout zone, but it adds airspace, RF and battery logistics. Teams comparing it against fireworks should weigh those, not just the visual result.

Compliance sits with the operator

CAA Part 101 approvals, geofencing and site permissions are handled on our side. What we need from a team is the venue contact, the event schedule and any broadcast or sponsor requirements that affect the flight window.

Weather is a shared decision

Coastal wind and rain can close a window with little notice. The call to fly, delay or stand down is made jointly with the event lead, and the sequence is built so a shortened version can still run.

Rehearsal is not the show

A clean morning rehearsal says little about a crowded evening site. Spectrum scans, crowd positions and battery rotation are re-checked on the day, and timings may shift after that.

Scenarios are illustrative

The team situations described here reflect real project types, not fixed packages. Scope, sequence length and crew size are set per event after the site survey.

For teams

What changes when a crew becomes a team

Two people can fly thirty drones off the back of a bakkie. Past a hundred units you are running a small operation: shift handovers, a second ground station, someone whose only job is batteries. These are the points where team structure actually decides whether the show goes up on time.

If you are still working out how a show gets built end to end, the process walkthrough covers the sequence from brief to teardown. When a gig goes sideways at 21:00, the support notes are where we log what actually broke.

Roles that survive a 300-drone show

Pilot in command, ground station operator, battery lead, safety marshal. Four people, four radios, no one guessing who calls the abort.

Battery rotation without gaps

Charge, cool, log, swap. A written rotation sheet means the second wave is ready before the first wave lands, and nobody grounds a fleet mid-show.

One choreography file, two operators

Skybrush exports versioned and shared before travel day. If the primary laptop dies, the backup opens the same timeline, not a slightly older one.

Compliance split across the crew

One person owns CAA Part 101 paperwork and venue liaison, another owns the flight volume and geofence. Handovers happen in writing, not over a noisy comms channel.

RF planning as a team task

Someone scans the site while the crew is still rigging. Channel choice gets made before the crowd arrives with their phones, not after the first dropped waypoint.

Teardown notes that carry forward

Firmware quirks, prop wash on a coastal night, the transition that ran a second early. Written down the same evening, read before the next build.

Why teams keep us on the crew list

Built by people who have stood in the field at 21:40 with a wind window closing

Most drone display advice online comes from a vendor page or a conference slide. Ours comes from teardown nights, re-timed transitions and the paperwork that actually got a stadium show airborne. Here is what separates this from the alternatives you will find.

Field notes, not marketing

Every claim traces back to a gig

The Skybrush timelines, the RF scans, the battery rotation sheets — they come from shows that flew, including the two transitions we had to rebuild after a rehearsal exposed a one-second arrival error.

Compliance that holds up

CAA Part 101, venue rules and the extras

Part 101 is the floor, not the ceiling. We walk through what a stadium safety officer, a municipality and an insurer each ask for, and where the requirements shift between an enclosed venue and a public harbour front.

Scales with your fleet

From 30 drones to 300

A two-person wedding crew and a 300-aircraft stadium team face different problems. The pre-flight checklist series is written so both can use it without wading through advice meant for the other.

See how a show gets planned end to end Ask the crew a direct question

What your team gets out of this

Whether you are two people with thirty aircraft or a crew running three hundred over a stadium precinct, the work behind a display is mostly logistics, paperwork and rehearsal. These are the areas we cover in depth, written from shows that actually flew.

Sequence design

Choreography in Skybrush and Blender

Blockouts, timing offsets and the transitions that only reveal themselves on the night. We walk through timelines as they were built, not as the manual describes them.

Compliance

CAA Part 101 and geofencing

The document stack for South African airspace, plus what the venue's safety officer and the municipality will ask for on top of the standard submission.

Link reliability

RF planning in crowded venues

Spectrum scans, channel choice and ground-station placement when a city-centre crowd arrives with a few thousand phones competing for the same band.

Fleet ops

Battery rotation and charging

Schedules that keep a hundred-plus aircraft in the air across a multi-set evening without grounding half the fleet before the finale.

Field notes

Teardown notes from real gigs

Firmware quirks, prop wash on coastal nights, the backup laptop that saved a show, and the two clauses clients routinely try to move onto the operator.

Scoping

Corporate activation vs festival slot

How the brief, the site constraints and the audience change what a display actually requires, and where the honest cost breakdowns sit against a pyro alternative.

New to this? Start with the pre-flight checklist series, or read how we run a show from brief to teardown. If your team needs a hand with a specific site, the support desk is where those questions land.