Introduction- Finally arriving at the Ardupilot as a FC solution- would love to find other local members

It took me a while to arrive at this as a solution, but lately all my copters have been extremely custom, and I’m reaching the end of capabilities in retail flight controls. I have a pretty exciting project going on right now that I’d love to have some collaborators on- however it would make things a lot easier if there were some local members (in my case local=Charlotte, NC) so we could actually meet up and talk shop. Is there a resource to find likeminded folks here? There is a drone meetup here which I have attended but it’s just guys flying very conventional (albeit expen$ive!) drones around from what I’ve seen. I want to talk more about doing custom everything.