so this happened last weekend and its been bugging me. i was flying my mavic at a local county park, nothing crazy, just cruising around filming some trees and a pond. a cop came over and told me i needed a permit to fly there and that drones were banned in county parks. i honestly had no idea, i checked the FAA map before i went and the airspace was fine. i packed up and left but now im wondering if he was actually right or just didnt know what he was talking about. like can a county actually ban drones at their parks even if the FAA says the airspace is clear. i didnt get a ticket or anything but want to know for future reference

yeah this comes up a lot and its genuinely confusing because there are like three layers of rules. FAA controls the airspace, so they say whether you can physically fly in that column of air. but local governments like counties and cities can still regulate WHERE you take off and land, because thats considered use of the land not the airspace. so technically both things can be true at the same time ? airspace is clear but the park itself bans drone launches. whether that specific cop knew the nuance or was just guessing, hard to say. id look up your county parks department website and see if they have a permit process, some of them do and its usually not that expensive or hard to get

ive had similar run-ins and honestly half the time the officers dont actually know the rules either, they just know drones are sometimes controversial and they respond to complaints. doesnt mean you were in the right or wrong but like, the safest thing is always just to be cool about it, leave when asked, and then look it up after. getting into an argument about FAA preemption in the field never goes well lol. that said some counties are genuinely strict about this stuff, my county requires a filmed event permit for anything that might involve cameras in public parks which is kind of a stretch but whatever