ok so this is a bit embarrassing but i was out hiking last weekend and brought my mini 3 along, there was this amazing view at the top and i just kind of launched without really thinking about it. got some great footage. but on the way home i was looking at my drone app and realized the area might have been inside some kind of national forest boundary or restricted zone, it wasnt showing red on the map but there was like a yellow advisory thing i clicked past.

nothing happened, no one came up to me, plane didnt scramble lol. but now im reading stuff online about national parks vs national forests having different rules and i honestly dont know what i actually flew in or if i did anything wrong. do i need to worry about this or is it one of those things where unless someone saw you its fine

national forests and national parks are actually pretty different situations. national parks have a near blanket ban on drone use, you need a special permit and they almost never give them out. national forests are managed by the forest service and technically flying is allowed in a lot of them UNLESS there's a specific closure order for that area. so whether you broke a rule or not kind of depends on exactly where you were. the yellow advisory you clicked past was probably just a warning about that, not a hard block. i wouldnt lose sleep over one flight where nothing happened but worth knowing the rules before you go out again

yeah i did basically the same thing my first year flying, didnt really understand the difference between the colored zones on the map. the apps do a pretty bad job of explaining what each color actually means, like there's a big difference between informational airspace and an actual restriction but they kinda look similar at a glance. i use B4UFLY now alongside whatever else im using just as a sanity check before i fly anywhere new, its a bit clunky but its the official FAA one so at least its not gonna miss something major