okay so this happened yesterday and im still a little annoyed about it. was flying my avata 2 maybe 200 meters offshore at a state beach in florida, kept it well under 400ft, stayed away from the lifeguard stands. cop comes over and tells me i need a permit to fly there. i showed him my part 107 and he kind of just shrugged and said it was a county ordinance thing not an FAA thing

i genuinely had no idea counties could have their own rules on top of the FAA stuff. been flying for 3 years and this is the first time ive run into this. is this actually common and im just late to figuring it out or what

yeah unfortunately this trips up a lot of people. local ordinances are totally separate from FAA airspace rules and they can be stricter. some counties and cities have outright bans on beach flying or require you to get a permit through the parks department or whatever. the FAA stuff is a federal floor not a ceiling basically. always worth checking the local parks and rec website before flying anywhere new especially beaches, parks, state land. its annoying but its just part of it now

same thing happend to me at a reservoir last summer. ranger didnt even know the specific rule he was citing, just said no drones allowed. i looked it up later and he was right, the water district had banned them after some idiot flew over nesting birds and it made the news or something. now i just check everything before i go even if it seems like an obvious yes