ok so i got my part 107 a few months ago and i fly mostly around my area which has some class D airspace near a regional airport. ive been using aloft to get LAANC authorizations but honestly im still not 100% sure when i actually need it vs when im fine without it. like if im flying at say 50 feet and im technically within the 5 mile radius or whatever does that still trigger the requirement? and what about areas that show up as yellow on the map vs the red ones ? does yellow mean i can just go or do i still need to submit something. i feel like i read three different things on three different websites and none of them agreed with each other. my buddy says if youre under 50 feet you dont need anything but that sounds wrong to me

your buddy is wrong lol, altitude has nothing to do with whether you need authorization ? it's entirely about the airspace class you're in. if you're in class D, class C, class B, or class E surface airspace you need LAANC or a manual waiver regardless of how low you're flying. the color coding in aloft or B4UFLY is basically telling you what ceiling is available in that grid square, so yellow might mean you can get auto-approval up to like 100ft or 200ft depending on the facility. red means that grid is 0ft authorized so you'd have to do a manual waiver and good luck getting that approved quickly. just always check before you fly, takes like two minutes in aloft and it covers you legally

yeah this confused me too when i started out. the way i think about it now is basically ? if you open the map and your flying spot is inside any controlled airspace ring at all, just submit the LAANC. its free and takes like a minute so theres no real reason not to. the one time i didnt bother because i thought i was just barely outside the ring i ended up getting a call from the tower and that was not a fun conversation. never again