Lifting up the next generation: Drone camp soars into its fifth year
The year was 2022. Owen Puckett of Forest, Virginia, was 12 years old, fresh out of sixth grade, and flying a drone in the Virginia Tech Drone Park that he built just days before.
“It was fun,” Puckett said. “I wasn't the best at flying it, but I felt a lot of joy when I made something from my own hands that I was able to use.”
Four years after his experience at the inaugural Virginia Tech Imagination Drone Camp, Puckett, now 16, is a backyard drone enthusiast and aspiring engineer. He's attended another Virginia Tech camp, BLAST, and was recently accepted to the XLR8 Lynchburg Regional Governor’s STEM Academy, where he'll begin this fall.
“There, I will take engineering classes and get a certificate in engineering fundamentals and hopefully attend Virginia Tech,” Puckett said.
Puckett’s newfound excitement for drone technology and research is exactly what Imagination Drone Camp organizers hope students will take away from the camp, according to Toby Tracy, engineering project manager at Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership (MAAP).
“Hearing that the experiences at camp make such an impression on young people inspires us to keep working hard to make the camp better every year,” he said.
This year’s camp, offered June 14-19, will be attended by approximately 40 rising seventh and eighth grade students from across the Commonwealth of Virginia and beyond. Keep up with this year’s drone camp adventures on Instagram.
The camp is offered as part of the Center for Engineering Excellence and Discovery’s Imagination series and MAAP. The curriculum includes building and flying a drone — also known as an unmanned aircraft system, or UAS — in the Virginia Tech Drone Park, visiting the drone delivery company Wing, and lectures from industry partners, such as the Virginia Space Grant Consortium. Campers also earn their Federal Aviation Administration Recreational UAS Safety Test, or TRUST, certificates in the operations classroom.
Porter DuHadway '26, who graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering, will return to work at the camp as a MAAP intern this summer. Last year, he worked with campers as part of a student internship he had with the Virginia Space Grant Consortium, a coalition of five Virginia colleges and universities, NASA, industry partners, and state educational agencies in Hampton.
"Working with kids to help them realize the beauty and potential of unmanned aircraft at a young age is such a blessing,” DuHadway said. “Being able to come alongside them and help them understand the ins and outs of aviation, regulations, drone utilization, and flight builds is a massive part of the mission of Virginia Space Grant Consortium."
For many middle schoolers, the drone camp is their first experience on a university campus, eating at dining halls, and sleeping in residence halls, in addition to getting experience with cutting-edge technology.
“I hope that the attendees this year make new friends at camp,” Puckett said. “I hope that they can learn new things that they like and new things about themselves. I hope overall they have a really good experience.”
