Eidinger’s drone over Adams Morgan Day, before it crashed.

We’ve told you all about the hobby drone that a D.C. resident Adam Eidinger lost over Adams Morgan (it was eventually found), and the fact that the FAA told him that flying anything more complicated than a kite isn’t permitted in D.C.’s restricted airspace. Well, he’s apparently not the only drone hobbyist that has been read the riot act by the FAA in recent weeks.

NPR’s All Things Considered reported yesterday that five national security writers looking to see whose drone was best were also told not to fly them over D.C., forcing them to find a location beyond the city’s airspace—a park in Manassas:

“Rather to my surprise, I got a phone call from the FAA informing me that they considered it improper and illegal to run drones in Washington,” says Ben Wittes, an architect of the drone competition. That includes even little rinky-dink, unarmed drones like these Parrot AR models.

So the race was on to find a new location, only days before the event. They settled on a grassy area in Manassas, Va., bordered by a pond, leafy trees and a patch of poison ivy.

Congress has given the FAA until 2015 to devise rules and regulations that allow for the commercial use of drones, but it remains to be seen if the city’s drone hobbyists—and there seem to be a few—will ever be able to take off over D.C.