Are You Breaking Drone Laws? Find Out Before It's Too Late!

One of the important things if you're
going to be flying a drone, even if it's
just recreationally or commercially, um,
and part of your registration process,
and if you're flying recreationally, you
have something called a trust test that
you have to take. And one of the things
you have, there are certain restricted
areas where we can and we cannot fly. So
the drones have a ceiling of 400 ft.
They can't fly above. Aircraft have a
floor of 500 ft. So it gives us 100t
buffer of safety there. And now the
exception to that is when airplanes are
taking off or landing right near
airports. So if we're within five miles
of an airport, we have to get permission
to fly the drone from air traffic
control just like any aircraft flying
when they get anywhere within 5 milesi
of an airport, usually a lot farther
than that, they're communicating with
air traffic control. So they know where
they are and they everyone knows what's
going on with everything. So the good
news is for us drone pilots are there
there are some apps where we can get
basically instantaneous approval. We
just click a few buttons and it will
give you instantaneous approval to fly.
Now often times depending how close you
are to the airport your ceiling might
not be 400. It might only be 200 or 100
ft. But you know at least what that is
and what you're authorized to fly. And
it's super important because that's
that's legal. You have to be legal to be
able to do that. Uh it's just like in a
construction zone. It might normally be
60 m an hour, but the construction
zone's 35. You have to pay attention to
and abide by those rules. Um, or people
could get hurt or even die or something
like that. Same thing with the air. So,
when there are any restrictions in the
air. Now, those are it's not just around
airports, it's also around military
bases, it's around government offices,
it's around stadiums. Um, and then there
are these things called TFRs, temporary
flight restrictions. And these um
they're rare what they come up, but they
do come up. And again, it's your
responsibility to be able to find out if
there's a TFR. Now, the good news is a
lot of these apps um they pull this data
up. And so, you just have to glance at
them before your flight. It's part of
your pre-flight checklist. One thing
that I recommend every drone pilot get
in the habit of doing their pre-flight
checklist. Almost every accident I've
seen has been a direct result of
somebody skipping their pre-flight
checklist and they miss something or
something that was on a pre-flight
checklist they would have caught and it
would have prevented the accident. But
people are like, "Well, I'm I only do my
pre-flight checklist if I'm on a
commercial shoot or I only do it if the
wind's this or I only do it if that's
kind of like, well, I only put my
seatelt on if I'm going over 100 miles
an hour, you know, or I only, you know,
so you you just need to get in a habit
of doing it every time. If you get in a
habit of doing it every time, it sucks
in the beginning because it takes you a
couple of minutes to do it. But once you
get in the habit of doing it every
single time, just like you get in the
car and you put your seatelt on every
time, you don't even think about it. If
you get in the habit of doing it, then
it takes usually less than a minute. And
part of your pre-flight checklist is
checking the airspace and knowing what
what's available there. And what happens
if you don't like there was an incident
in in California at the beginning of
2025 where you had the Palisade fires
and a drone didn't check. There was a
TFR, of course, because anytime you have
an emergency like that, a TFR when they
do a flight restriction, it's usually an
emergency of some kind. Um, so they
close the airspace down to keep anyone
from flying there. In this case of a
fire, you know, forest fires or
wildfires, you have emergency aircraft
that are flying below that 500 ft. Now,
they have authorization to fly there. If
you if there's a TFR, it doesn't