I have been flying for a couple of years and never heard of this. I looked it up and indeed it's true: A new requirement as of a few months ago. I bet most drone pilots are unaware of this.
My take on drones for anyone curious: The majority of people buy them, use them a lot for 6 months, then they sit on a shelf. So be sure you really want one before spending $1,000 on a toy. You could buy a used one to try it out, but you should buy a new battery. The batteries deteriorate with each use (the drone pilot class I took said you take about a $2 hit every time you fly) and it could be unsafe to fly with a used battery that you don't know the history of.
DJI and Autel make the best drones. There may be others, but the software controlling the autopilot is a bit difficult to make so the larger companies are safer bets.
A good first drone would be this one. You could buy a cheap $100 one--that will actually make you a better pilot. The more advanced drones like this one will hover perfectly still in the air, and have GPS radios which can return them home automatically if signal or battery power is weak. The cheaper ones are fully manual and are a challenge just to hover in place, much less fly.
There is a drone pilot's license, but most will not need it. The biggest complaint with the license is it has an expiration date, so I haven't gotten one. It does allow you to fly at night but otherwise practically speaking it has never prevented me from flying anywhere I wanted to.
Yes you are not supposed to fly over 400 feet, but if you go way out in the country and fly super high, you will discover the ground looks incredibly similar from 200-800 feet, so this is not really a limitation. It's kind of like SCUBA diving -- the biggest differences by far are within the first 50 feet.
I am a photographer, so need a minimum 1" sensor (What the heck does a 1 / 1.3" sensor even mean? What is this bizarre combination of fractions with decimals?? Give us the size in mm please!) and I went with the Autel Evo Pro II but this is an expensive machine. Autel and DJI are very similar, though Autel doesn't restrict where you can fly with software-enforced "no fly zones" or height limits, though they are being pressured to do so.
The era of the drones has already peaked in my opinion. The early adopters misused them, which led to things like their universal banning in national parks. It's sort of a catch-22 that now that we have gotten advanced drones with really nice cameras, you can no longer take them many of the places you would like to. I packed mine on a cross country trip last year and did not use it a single time, since every location I was motivated to use it was in a prohibited area.
There are a lot of misconceptions with the rules and it's a shame this wasn't handled better, but now we ended up with this system of restrictions and having to register a drone above 250 grams, and prohibited areas.
By the way, no one owns airspace above their property; it is a public good administered by the FAA. So when your drone use is 'prohibited' somewhere, that refers to taking off and landing from their property. You can even legally fly your drone over a national park, as long as you are not piloting from inside the national park (my drone instructor was a bit weird, and did this in front of a park ranger just to show off he knew the rules).
I guess it's good people are being required to learn the rules now, but it's a bit late to the party. As I said, drones have already peaked in their adoption and usefulness, but hey, they are still a fun toy, even just for playing around with at home or the park.
The best thing to do is to take a drone pilots training class--mine was a 2 day class which let us fly a variety of drones from many manufacturers and price ranges, you can see and compare the features of each, and get some basic hands on practice flying, as well as going over the rules. They are probably tied in with that new training certificate now, I would guess, but if not, I strongly recommend the pilot class anyway.
My plan was always to use them abroad in some foreign countries with fewer restrictions (picture flying down a remote beach in southern Brazil) and hopefully the covid restrictions on international travel will be lifted soon...
