Have a Drone? Check the Map Before You Fly It

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The popularity of drones is climbing quickly among companies, governments and citizens alike. But the rules surrounding where, when and why you can fly an unmanned aerial vehicle aren’t very clear.

The FAA has tried to assert control and insist on licensing for all drone operators, while drone pilots and some legal experts claim drones do not fall under the FAA’s purview. The uncertainty—and recent attempts by the FAA to fine a drone pilot and ground a search and rescue organization—has UAV operators nervous, the WIRED reported.

To help with the question of where it is legal to fly a drone, Mapbox has put together an interactive map of all the no-fly zones for UAVs they could find.

Most of the red zones on the map are near airports, military sites and national parks.

As one of the map’s authors, Bobby Sudekum, writes on the Mapbox blog, it’s a work in progress. They’ve made the data they collected available for anyone to use, and if you know of other no-fly zones that aren’t on the map, you can add that data to a public repository they started on GitHub.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

For instance, you’ll see on the map that there isn’t a no-fly area over Berkeley Lab, which sits in the greyed area in the hills above UC Berkeley. Similarly, there is no zone marked around Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the country’s two nuclear weapons labs.

If you have a drone, just know that in 2006, the lab acquired a Gatling gun that has a range of 1 mile and can fire 4,000 rounds a minute.