been planning a trip to a few countries in central europe next spring and wanted to bring my Air 3 along for some landscape stuff. started looking into the EASA open category rules and honestly i dont know how anyone keeps track of all this. like each country seems to have its own layer of rules on top of the EU baseline and some of the national parks have their own restrictions that arent even listed anywhere obvious

i flew in portugal two years ago and it was pretty straightforward at the time but apparently things have shifted since then. someone in another group told me hungary and croatia have gotten stricter but couldnt give me specifics. im registered in the US so thats another whole layer of confusion with whether i need to register separately in the EU or if theres some reciprocal thing

has anyone done a multi-country europe trip recently and actually figured this out without losing their mind

yeah the EU situation is genuinely messy even for people who live here. the EASA framework was supposed to harmonize everything but countries still have discretion over certain things like nature reserves and urban areas so you really do have to check each country individually. the drone scene app and the official EASA drone regulation map are your best starting points, they're not perfect but better than trying to piece it together from random blog posts

for the registration question ? as a non-EU operator youre supposed to register in the EU member state where you first fly. most people do it in whichever country is easiest or where theyll spend the most time. it took me maybe 20 minutes to register in Germany when i went last summer. the A1/A3 operator ID you get is recognized across member states so you dont have to re-register in every country, that part at least works like it should

croatia was fine when i went, that was about 8 months ago. i just made sure to stay out of the national park zones and kept under 120m like usual. nobody bothered me. tbh i think the rules sound scarier on paper than they are in practice as long as your flying sensibly and not doing anything obviously dumb near people or airports

that said i also didnt do a ton of research beforehand which probably wasnt smart in hindsight, got lucky nothing came up