so ive been planning this iceland trip for like 8 months and obviously the drone is coming with me. got a mini 3 pro. ive done some reading about the rules there but honestly its a bit confusing because some of it seems outdated. i know theres the transport authority website but half of it is in icelandic and the translated version feels off.

main thing im worried about is the national parks, i heard a lot of them are no-fly or you need permits and the permit process takes forever. anyone actually done this recently and can tell me what the real deal is on the ground vs what the rules technically say

went last september. honestly the national park thing is real, vatnajokull and a few others are strict and there are rangers who actually check. i tried to get a permit for one area and it took like 3 weeks and they still came back with conditions on altitude and distance from certain features. wasnt worth the stress so i just flew outside the park boundaries where it was totally fine and got amazing shots anyway.

one thing nobody told me ? the wind. like i knew it would be windy but not that kind of windy. lost like 30% battery just fighting the wind on a short flight near vik. keep your flights short and always fly into the wind first so youre not trying to fight it back to home point on a dying battery

cant help with the permit stuff but the safest thing ive found when traveling is just to download the local airspace app they use, iceland uses flugumferd i think, and also load up b4ufly or whatever works in europe just to cross check. better to have two sources than trust one map thats out of date