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County Park’s UAV Rules - are these “Reasonable?”

Hands Down

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I guess I’m just looking for opinions, and whether there is a similar trend in your area.

Great Parks of Hamilton County (Ohio)

I’ll start out by saying that these seem more reasonable and forward thinking than the county park system in my county, Butler, which is adjacent to Hamilton. Butler County Park’s rules can be pretty quickly summed up as “nope.” [I did call Butler County and they said they might grant permission if you lost something in the park and wanted to try to find it.]

For Hamilton County, I like that they have designated areas in most of their larger parks. The private use application seems for the most part pretty reasonable to me. Having to request permission a week in advance for a specific park, day, time, area, and having to provide a “description of the project” all seem somewhat in conflict with “recreational use” to me, though. It’s definitely more than you’d have to do to launch a boat. Looks like you also have to provide proof of registration even for aircraft the FAA does not require registration for.

For commercial permission, there is a $250/day fee, per park. For a Hollywood feature film, I doubt that would impact the budget too much. I’m thinking they don’t see too many Hollywood film crews though? For someone with a fledgling YouTube channel, I would think they’d be hard pressed to get the return on investment out of this fee.

So I guess my opinion is that these rules could still use a bit of tweaking. I will give them credit though. At least someone on the park board has sat down and thought about how they can allow pilots to operate drones within these parks rather than banning them completely.

What do you all think? Are you seeing similar rules in your city or county parks?
 
PA has a preemption law for UAV’s so only the state legislature can enact restrictions. You can’t fly (take off/land) in PA state parks except in designated areas of 5 specific parks. Except for FAA restrictions local and county parks are fine.
 
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PA has a preemption law for UAV’s so only the state legislature can enact restrictions. You can’t fly (take off/land) in PA state parks except in designated areas of 5 specific parks. Except for FAA restrictions local and county parks are fine.

That’s quite interesting, and a nice preemptive law to have on the books. Apparently Ohio has no such preemptive law. In terms of Ohio State Parks, while I haven’t researched them too thoroughly yet, just in looking quickly at the state park websites, I’m not finding anything obvious prohibiting them.
 
The commercial fee is basically a tax. If I were a commercial pilot and doing a job I would apply as a recreational flight and let my client know that the fee would be at least $250 more if they let the county know it was commercial. A 107 rated pilot is likely to be a much safer pilot too.
 
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Awhile ago, FAA reminded States and municipalities that only the FAA controls the airspace. Although municipalities may prohibit take off/landing from their property, you may fly over the property unless the FAA has a no fly zone FAA letter, click here.

Thanks for the link. I guess to me, the opposite is the more frustrating part. It’s not so much that I’m wanting to use the air space in various parks while operating from outside of them even if it is technically legal. It’s that parks seem like a good place to take off, land, and operate because they are publicly owned.
 
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The commercial fee is basically a tax. If I were a commercial pilot and doing a job I would apply as a recreational flight and let my client know that the fee would be at least $250 more if they let the county know it was commercial. A 107 rated pilot is likely to be a much safer pilot too.
Standard disclaimer - this suggestion doesn't represent the views of MavicPilots. We recommend following all the rules and regulations.
 
Standard disclaimer - this suggestion doesn't represent the views of MavicPilots. We recommend following all the rules and regulations.
Sorry to forget the personal opinion portion in my post.

I follow the rules, but $250 is a gouge no matter how one looks at it. $25/day for commercial would be more inline with reasonable. The cost is going to get passed to the client and is simply big brother dipping their hand in the till.
 
Sorry to forget the personal opinion portion in my post.

I follow the rules, but $250 is a gouge no matter how one looks at it. $25/day for commercial would be more inline with reasonable. The cost is going to get passed to the client and is simply big brother dipping their hand in the till.
I agree but big brother is here you just forgot to mention …IMO..
I think a lot of these rules are overboard depending on who’s flyig
and if they use common sense. But just my opinion.😉
 
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