so this happened last tuesday and im still kind of processing it. was flying my air 2s maybe 50 meters up over this beach near setubal, completely empty stretch of coast, no people around, wind was calm, everything seemed fine. out of nowhere a GNR officer comes down the path and just waves me down basically. my portuguese is not great so there was a lot of hand gesturing involved.

turns out i was flying too close to some kind of protected coastal zone, i genuinely had no idea. he was actually pretty chill about it once i landed immediately and showed him i wasnt being weird about it. no fine, just told me to move on. but it shook me a bit because i thought i had done my research before the trip. used the EASA drone map and everything looked okay to me but apparently local protected area rules are on top of that and harder to find out about

moral of the story i guess is that the official apps dont always capture everything, especially nature reserves and coastal protection zones. ask locals or the tourist office when in doubt

ugh yeah the EASA map is honestly a starting point not the full picture. same thing happened to me near a beach in Croatia, flew right over what turned out to be some kind of nesting protection zone. nobody stopped me but i found out after and felt pretty bad about it. now i try to google the specific area name plus drone rules before i even unpack the case

glad it worked out okay. quick landing and being cooperative goes a long way, ive heard stories of people getting into way more trouble just because they got defensive or tried to argue. the drone community doesnt need more bad press from incidents like that