How to know where not to fly your drone

How to know where not to fly your drone

It's easier than ever to get your hands on a ready-to-fly quadcopter to send buzzing around the skies. But there are definitely some guidelines you'll want to follow before taking off.

Joshua Goldman/CNET

Editors' note: What follows is not legal advice. Please contact officials in your area or consult an attorney for laws, rules and regulations for where you plan to fly.

The current furor about drones and what you should and shouldn't be allowed to do with them is another case of technology being ahead of laws and regulations (not unlike the controversy over 3D-printed firearms).

Spurred by concerns about privacy and public safety, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has initiated an awareness campaign, including a new site, Know Before You Fly. That's in advance of more concrete consumer drone legislation expected from the agency by the end 2015. At the moment, however, current regulations for where and under what conditions you can recreationally fly radio-controlled drones -- quadcopters, multirotors, flying cameras, unmanned aircraft systems or vehicles (UAS or UAV) or whatever you want to call them -- are a bit confusing.

So before you take your new toy out for spin in the park, here's what you need to know. And this goes for everything for recreational use: from palm-size toys that can be flown around your living room to large multirotor aerial photography and videography models that can carry dSLRs.

Joshua Goldman/CNET

The basics

The FAA claims responsibility for the safety of US airspace from the ground up. For RC hobbyists (read: noncommercial pilots), the FAA safety guidelines limit recreational use of model aircraft to below 400 feet, within sight of the operator and more than 5 miles away from airports and air traffic without prior FAA notification. These guidelines fall in line with the National Model Aircraft Safety Code of theAcademy of Model Aeronautics (AMA).

Other no-fly zones include military bases and national parks. Though some models, such as DJI's Phantom 2, use GPS to help avoid flying too close to an airport, in general you're on your own in following these guidelines. Custom map developer Mapbox created a Don't Fly Drones Here map for the US if you're curious about the area where you plan to fly. DJI has a global No Fly Zones map.