asking for a friend kind of but also asking for myself. so there's this area near where i live that i've flown maybe 4 or 5 times over the past year, just recreational stuff nothing crazy. recently someone mentioned to me that part of it might be restricted airspace or something related to some infrastructure nearby, i think a dam or a power facility. i never saw any signage and my app didnt warn me at the time, though i was using a pretty old version of the app so maybe that's on me.

i'm not trying to be irresponsible about it i genuinely just didnt know. but now im kind of paranoid that i did something wrong. is this the kind of thing where if nobody reported you you're probably fine, or does the FAA actually track this stuff and come after you later? i have part 107 so it's not like im some random person who bought a toy drone, which maybe makes it worse because they might hold me to a higher standard?

realistically if nothing happened and nobody reported you youre probably not going to hear anything about past flights. the FAA doesnt have some dragnet system watching every flight - they mostly respond to complaints or incidents. that said infrastructure like dams and power generation facilities can fall under this kind of vague critical infrastructure protection thing and some of them are actually designated no fly zones that dont always show up super clearly in consumer apps. worth checking the actual FAA sectional charts for that area rather than relying on the DJI airspace overlay which has been wrong or outdated in my experience more than once.

the part 107 thing cuts both ways - yes they hold you to a higher standard, but it also means you have more tools and more responsibility to know the rules. going forward i'd just double check with skyvector or the B4UFLY app before flying anywhere you havent flown before. and yeah if you genuinely didnt know and nothing bad happened, i wouldnt lose sleep over it.

honestly the FAA has way bigger fish to fry than someone doing recreational flights who wasnt even aware. the cases where people actually get fined are usually when something went wrong or when someone was being obviously reckless and got reported. the ignorance defense doesnt technically hold up legally but in practice if nothing happened to anyone and theres no complaint filed against you, its very unlikely anything comes of it. just dont do it again once you know.