have your heard the "castle doctrine"
I don't think that applies to the great outdoors. Perhaps you're confusing castle doctrine and "stand your ground"? Also you're going to have issues claiming that your "castle" extends to your home's airspace or that you felt your life was being threatened by a drone. But if someone wants to test that theory, I'm sure we all have plenty of popcorn ready for the battle of federal law and state.
Well, it comes down to the classic property rights struggle. From the neighbors' POV, they have a right to a degree of quiet, safe, private enjoyment of their property. Governments have agreed, requiring things like ATVs and dirt bikes to go to the edge of town. For a lot of your neighbors, this would also make sense for drones. Get enough drones buzzing around neighborhoods and it's going to happen.
When
Cometstorm wrote "I think a lot depends on your home “base” locale", I interpreted that to be a crack about the
nature of your neighbors. Meaning, if you're surrounded by
low-information types of folks, you're likely to experience more difficulties. But that's probably just a reflection of some of my own prejudices and, well, honestly, life's lessons.
While the noise probably had nothing to do with this, it brings up an important point. There are people - and organizations - who are desperately trying to manage the noisescape. I agree with their goals. Loud motorcycles, weed whackers, leaf blowers, loud cars, jake brakes on trucks, etc. are all high on their list of irritants. And my city has gone to great lengths to mitigate noise from trains, highways, HVAC systems, construction, etc. BUT... all that said, I have yet to hear anyone on these noise -related forums utter a word about drones.
And it seems to me after reading the comments on this web site that there are far more drone users concerned about limiting their own noise than there are, say, motorcycle riders concerned about limiting the noise
they make. And before anyone jumps on me about this, please consider I've been riding motorcycles for thirty-five years.
the phantoms have a 2x digital zoom
I haven't even noticed a digital zoom setting on my P3A. I don't know why folks are so enthralled with digital zoom, anyway. All it does is restrict the image capture to a smaller area of the digital image sensor, greatly reducing the number of "pixels" being used to capture the image. At most it saves you from reaching for your reading glasses. It's not gonna reveal any more detail.