so this happened last weekend and its been bugging me. i was flying at a county park, nothing crazy, just cruising around over the open grass area, had my faa registration on the drone and everything. a cop came over and said i needed a permit to fly there and that drones werent allowed. i wasnt sure so i just landed and left but i looked it up after and i couldnt find anything on the county website saying drones were banned

i feel like i just kind of folded but i also didnt want to make it a whole thing. does anyone know how this usually works, like can a county park just ban drones or does federal law override that? im in ohio if that matters

this is kind of a gray area honestly. the faa controls the airspace which is federal jurisdiction, but local governments can regulate where you take off and land from their property. so technically a county park can say no launching or landing drones here even if the FAA hasnt said anything about it. the cop might have been right depending on whether the county actually has that rule, or he might have just assumed

what I'd do is send an email to the county parks department asking specifically about their drone policy. get it in writing basically. a lot of parks genuinely dont have a clear policy and the ranger or cop is just going off a gut feeling. ive had rangers tell me stuff was illegal that absolutely was not and when i showed them the actual county ordinance they just kind of shrugged

ugh this happens all the time. honestly i probably would have done the same thing, not worth arguing with a cop over it in the moment. but yeah look up your county ordinances, most of them are online as PDFs somewhere. if it turns out theres no actual rule you could always go back and fly and just have the ordinance pulled up on your phone in case it happens again