so i just got back from Portugal and honestly the drone stuff was way more stressful than the actual flying. spent like two nights before the trip trying to figure out if my mini 3 pro needed to be registered there and whether i needed authorization for the spots i wanted to shoot. ended up registering on the ENAC site which i think was wrong?? portugal uses ANAC and i only figured that out like the morning we landed. somehow nothing bad happened but i was lowkey nervous every time i pulled it out near lisbon.

anyone else done europe with a non-EU registered drone? does the whole EASA open category thing actually apply to tourists or is it more like... a grey area that nobody enforces

yeah its def a grey area and honestly most tourist areas nobody is gonna stop you unless youre being an idiot about it. i flew in spain and italy last year, registered in neither, just kept the drone under 250g and stayed away from airports and tourist monuments. the 250g limit is kind of a magic number in europe for exactly this reason

that said if youre going somewhere more strict like near a national park or a historic site you really do want to check because some of those have actual rangers or local police who know what theyre doing

i made the same ENAC mistake lol thought it was for all of southern europe or something. ANAC is portugal, ENAC is france/italy i think. anyway welcome to the club of figuring this out the hard way