so this happened to me last weekend, drove like 2 hours out to this reservoir area i saw on google maps, looked amazing from the satellite view, figured itd be a quiet spot. got there, pulled out the mavic, opened up airspace apps and... yeah. turns out theres some kind of wildlife management zone nearby and the whole area was flagged. not a hard no but one of those authorization required things and obviously i wasnt gonna get that sorted standing in a parking lot.

ended up just doing some handheld filming and hiking around. honestly a bit gutted because the light was perfect. think my lesson here is just to do the airspace check before i even decide on a location, not after ive already made the drive. anyone else done this kind of thing

yeah done this more times than i want to admit. now i check aloft and google maps terrain the night before, saves so much hassle. also sometimes those wildlife zones have seasonal restrictions so its worth looking up the actual zone details, sometimes its only restricted during nesting season or whatever and you might still be fine

honestly the authorization stuff isnt always as hard as it looks. for some of those zones you can get laanc approval instantly through the app. depends on the specific zone tho, wildlife ones are a different category sometimes. still annoying when youre already standing there tho i feel that