I plan on introducing myself to this part of the hobby by getting my Ardupilot up in the air successfully. At the moment I am teaching myself C++, and hope to get involved in the development of the open source aspect. My project at the moment will consist of

Easystar
Ardupilot
406 GPS

I still need

IMU sensor
Airspeed sensor
Shield unit
Xbee telemetry

When I get the next generation Ardupilot, I plan on taking advantage of full duplex telemetry.

It seems like you two have the experience in the technical part, and I would like to learn. Perhaps I could come out some weekend, and if it turns out good, perhaps we could have a meet every weekend or so for a current project? I am currently in a club involved in building model aircraft, but I think it would be great if I could get involved with drones with other people of that interest.

Currently I am flying an FPV Easystar. I am building a case that will house a 22 or 24 inch TV along side a 15 inch computer monitor for my Netbook and will have all the electronics, switches, and computer keyboard integrated into the case.

Ultimately I hope to get to the point of creating my own dev boards, but that will be in a long time.

Oh, and yes I do have good flying experience with model planes, especially these smaller foam planes. I don't know if you are involved with any club at the moment (60 acres?), but I would be glad to give some lessons through a buddy box setup. I could even use my Easystar, the thing is perfect for a learning platform, and even try your hand at some FPV if you want.

By the way, do you have a Skype account? You could contact me on that quickly, my account is scottlencl or scolen3, not sure what the main account was, its one of them.