New to drone life. Any suggestions for places?

PanamaMike · Feb 6, 2021

Welcome to the forum, from the Republic of Panama!

who231983 · Feb 6, 2021

Howard70 said:
Hello Who231983:

Welcome to our forum & congratulations on your 2nd drone! I also fly an MA2 (my first drone). You asked for suggestions about where to fly - I noticed your location as San Jacinto, CA. Looking at a public lands overlay on GAIAGPS it appears you may have vast amounts of public lands within reasonable driving distance (BLM to the north and San Bernadino National Forest to the east). In general you can fly almost anywhere in BLM and National Forest lands but National Parks are much more restricted (my default assumption is flying prohibited in National Parks) and National Monuments somewhere in between.

It can be helpful to distinguish between from where you can pilot your drone from where the drone can go while in flight. Piloting is a terrestrial activity subject to local laws and regulations while where the drone can legally go is an aerial activity basically governed by the FAA here in the USA. Of course where the drone can go while in flight is legally tied to the piloting location by the Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) rule.

Another aspect of where to fly is how you wish to contribute to the image of drones and drone pilots held by the general public (mostly non pilots with a possibly distorted view of how drones affect them). A strictly legal interpretation of where you can fly might have a drone or pilot acting completely within their current legal restrictions but annoying neighbors or others enough that future laws restrict our activities further - as in the case of current proposals for new laws in Mississippi.

My personal approach is to fly away from other folks so that I don’t impinge on their potential desires for solitude or privacy. However, I’m lucky in that I live in New Mexico where our population density is low and I have lots of state and federal public land available to me.

Have fun and keep your questions coming!

Howard

Thank you for the information. I will continue searching this area. Today, I will try my best to take some nice videos at Torrey Pines State Park. There's a section that's a fly zone I believe in the south and northern side . Will post videos and location but warning the video maybe lil rough as I'm just learning to use editing software. Just download resolve. Well, let's see how it goes.