Drone Pilots Anonymous: A Support Group for Gear Addicts Over 40

Welcome to the DPA Club

Hello fellow pilots! Did you drink water today? Did you let your drone batteries cool down before charging? Did you feed the dog? Buy some bread and milk? Did you make your bed?

If you answered “yes” to all of that, let me give you the warmest welcome to Drone Pilots Anonymous, where the youngest member has more divorces than drones, and our average credit card debt is higher than our flight ceiling.

Today we’re going to talk about how to get a Pulitzer Prize writing funny drone articles. Or not. Let’s stick to our original article before we crash and burn like that one time with the Mavic in the lake (we don’t talk about the lake incident).

No more GAS!

Do you know what GAS is? Yes, we know it also means fart in Spanish, but in our context, in English, it means “Gear Acquisition Syndrome.” And now you have a name for that itchy feeling in your fingertips when a new lens/camera body/drone comes within a 10-foot radius. It’s like Spider-Man’s spider sense, but for expensive toys that will make our wives question our life choices.

And it’s not only that. It’s that we feel we deserve those toys, that we earned them by working our asses off every day and night. We tell ourselves: “I’m a responsible adult who pays taxes and remembers to put the toilet seat down… sometimes.”

It’s that we are big boys—sorry, big grown men—but still want some toys that maybe we didn’t receive at Christmas. Santa apparently doesn’t deliver $5,000 drones to good boys who are 45 and still live in their childhood bedroom… metaphorically speaking.

The cables. Not the cables. Not again.

And don’t let me start with the cables! I want to know who here doesn’t have a drawer on his desk (or a huge plastic transparent box) filled with cables of all kinds: USB-A, micro USB, mini USB, USB-C, network, HDMI, chargers that belong to devices we threw away in 2018… Guilty as charged here. My cable collection could probably connect the International Space Station to my neighbor’s WiFi.

What else characterizes our members? Feeling envy of other pilots? Oh, that’s the first rule of the DPA: we accept that it’s normal to always want more. You cannot eat enough chocolate, be thin enough, or have enough drones in our little drone rack. You have the Tello, then you want a Spark. The one with the Neo wants a Mini 4. The owner of the Mavic 2 Pro wants the 3. The one with the Mavic 4 Pro needs the Freefly Systems Alta X, and this last guy? He just wants a Gulfstream jet. Because why fly a drone when you can BE the drone?

The second rule of DPA club is that we know what we want, but we’re okay not having it right now. We’re not kids anymore. We know there’s a time and place for some things in life (for example, we know that a pizza-based diet will make our souls happy, but long-term, it will kill us faster than flying FPV without goggles).

It’s the same with drones: can you imagine that little 42-year-old boy who just had his 5th flight with the Neo taking the controls of an Inspire 3? Cool? Absolutely. Dangerous? For everyone in a 10-mile radius and probably some low-flying aircraft.

The third rule of the DPA club is we do NOT check our drone bag at the Airport. Ever.

Not even if they offer us free peanuts for life.

Have you ever witnessed the destruction of suitcases at the airport, or even in those funny YouTube videos that pop up after watching that cat cooking channel? Those baggage handlers belong in the WWE—or was it WWF? Doesn’t matter, they’re basically professional wrestlers in reflective vests. I’m not letting them treat my $3,000 flying baby like a gym bag full of dirty laundry that owes them money.

I would rather wear all my clothes at once (actually, I did it once—how could I forget: Caracas to Frankfurt, “short” flight), smuggle a toothbrush in my shoe, and pretend that my Inspire 2 is my emotional support animal than risk those Neanderthals touching it. One of our members once bought an extra seat for his Matrice and named it “Captain Skyboi.” TSA didn’t even blink—they’ve seen weirder things, apparently.

Remember: a real DPA member would rather leave their wife and kids at home than forget those precious extra batteries and ND Filters. The family can take the next flight; those batteries have a limited lifespan!

So, what do you think? Do you want your official DPA membership card? Subscribe to my YouTube channel, and when I hit the 10,000th subscriber, I’ll start printing the official membership cards! They’ll be laminated and everything—because we’re professionals here, even when we’re being ridiculous at 400 feet.