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FAA Grounds AMA Event: “No Pathway for Recreational Operators”

Jagerbomb52

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The AMA was denied permission to hold their annual night flying event at the AMA Expo West this year – and members are asking why.

My take is that the AMA was very short sighted a decade ago when all this was rolling out. If they were smart, they would have advocated in the original section 336 that their safety code could have become an official standard baked into the 336. Instead they decided to go the other route to lobby the provision for follow community based standards. They did this to bolster membership, thinking that theirs would be the standard everyone would follow. By not embracing new technology early they alienated a large portion of the RC market. Their efforts backfired on them when congress simply said all you have to do is observe the community rules and not be a member. Also congress screwed up back then, by not defining what a community based organization for aeromodeling is. Now they fixed some of this, but it may have been a day late and a dollar short.

The articles about this failed to mention it was controlled airspace. The FAA was clear with the latest changes that no night flights will be allowed for hobbyists in controlled airspace.
With the FAA's rolling roll out of Section 349 of the 2018 FMRA, limited recreational flyers (previously called hobbyists) were first disallowed from flying in controlled airspace (with the exception of approved fixed site designated areas that already had LOAs or COAs). They then opened controlled airspace by expanding LAANC to recreational operators, but only for daylight flights. The FAA has reported that they are working on further expanding LAANC to allow nighttime LAANC approved flights in controlled airspace, but until that happens, hobbyists remain confined to Class G for nighttime flying.

 
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