For several years, I’ve been flying on Ryanair as lightly as possible. I always have other things to carry besides pipes, and prefer not to check baggage. This has meant that I don’t travel much with my full set. But the wish to also include drones got me looking around my workshop for suitable drone parts to add to a practice set.
My first lightweight setup was a condensed tenor & baritone drone in one stock made out of bent drinking straws glued together inside of a piece of plastic tubing. Fine tuning was done with brass tubes that fit inside of the ends of the straws. Very short and light, but like many Northumbrian pipers, I would have to use a shoulder strap to keep the drones in playing position. I also wound up knocking the drone sliders out of placement fairly often with my bellows.
The second setup was a more traditional straight tenor & baritone drone from various sizes of electrical conduit that could slide together. The inner bores were made from suitable pieces of small diameter cane I had in the workshop, rolled up inside gluey magazine paper until they fit snugly inside the conduit.
Drone stocks and shut-off valves in both examples were made from the top sections of push-pull-cap soft drink containers. The cap and neck part of a bottle are strong enough for light drones like this. In the case of the second, traditional drone, I melted the ends of two pieces of conduit so that they fit inside the bottle neck, then wired and epoxyed the pieces together to make a two-bore stock, allowing the drones to lie across my lap like a standard set. Connections to the bag were made with a small piece of conduit tied into the bag, then a piece of heavy rubber hose that slid over both the conduit and over the push-pull-cap. The drones have never popped off during playing, so the connection seems strong enough.
Neither of these projects took more than a few hours to put together, including spray-painting them black and fitting standard cane reeds. Maybe something to think about before going on your next trip?