UAVs or “drones” are popularly understood to be (semi-)autonomous flying robots. But to understand if and how they are ascribed agency or autonomy we should begin by asking how they come to be present as drones in situated interaction in the first place. Not-yet-normal technology manifests in surprising situations that require particularly creative collaboration of interaction partners in the service of determining the qualities of the “droning” object they are finding themselves in the presence of. In other words: Studying drones really means studying drone practices, that is, interactions with and about the under-determined qualia of this emergent technology. The workshop will consider video data from three empirical cases: First, the unannounced presence of drones during a field experiment with university students. Second, interactions between professional drone pilots and residents on public streets during thermographic mapping at night. Third, collaborative simulation of drone flight in a professional air traffic simulator.