ok so not proud of this but i was out last weekend and kind of just... flew anyway in an area that i knew was restricted. it was a class D airport nearby but i was like maybe 2 miles out and not anywhere near actual flight paths or so i thought. nobody said anything and i didnt see any authorities or anything. plane did fly kind of nearby at one point which made me nervous but i landed pretty quick after that.

im genuinely curious what the actual consequences are if the FAA does catch up with you for something like this. i registered my drone and everything so my info is out there. is this something they actually pursue or is it mostly just if you cause an actual incident. not trying to make this a habit just want to understand how serious this actually is

honestly the FAA doesnt have the resources to chase down every violation and most of the time if nothing happened they're not going to come knocking. that said if a pilot reported a drone near their approach path that's a different story because those get logged and investigated. you're registered so theoretically they could trace it back if they had a reason to look. the fines are real though ? civil penalties can be up to $27,500 per violation for UAS stuff and if they wanted to make an example of someone they absolutely could. probably fine this time but id really not make a habit of it near class D, those controllers are actually watching

two miles from a class D airport is actually still inside the airspace depending on which direction and how the surface area is drawn, its not always a perfect circle. i dont want to freak you out but i'd look up exactly where the boundaries were before you assume you were clear. LAANC exists precisely so you dont have to guess. takes like 2 minutes to get authorization for most places and its free so theres really no reason not to use it going forward