so this happened last weekend and im still kind of annoyed about it. i was flying at a county park, nothing crazy, staying well below 400 feet, had my recreational flyer certificate thing from the faa test done months ago, and a cop rolled up and told me i couldnt fly there because of a park ordinance or something. he didnt really know the details himself and basically just said he'd been getting complaints from people walking nearby. i left because i didnt want drama but now im trying to figure out if he was even right. like can a county park actually ban drones? i thought federal rules kind of trumped local stuff for airspace. this is in virginia btw.

ugh this is such a frustrating grey area and it comes up constantly. so the short answer is yes, local governments and park authorities can ban drone takeoff and landing from their property even if they cant technically regulate the airspace itself. the faa preempts airspace regulation but it doesnt stop a county from saying hey you cant launch or land a drone from our land. its a distinction a lot of people dont realize until something like this happens to them. your best bet for that specific park is to look up the county parks and rec rules online or just call them directly. some parks in virginia have explicit no drone policies posted, others dont care at all, really depends on the jurisdiction. the cop probably wasnt making it up but probably also didnt know the legal nuance himself.

same thing happened to me in maryland a while back. what i started doing is just emailing the parks department before i go anywhere new, takes like 2 minutes and if they say yes you have it in writing. most of the time they dont even respond which i kind of take as implicit whatever but at least i tried. also the know before you fly site has some state by state stuff that might help, though it's not always updated super recently in my experience.