Here is what the local FAA Saftey inspector from the FSDO told me less
than a month ago.
"Just about everyone likes to do a low pass once in a while. I have
even done one in a my Aeronca champ, but no one noticed. The FAR's say
500 feet from any man made object, except for takeoff and landing.
Precedince is a fence post is a man made object. However an occasional
low pass safely done over a runway will usually not get the FAA's
attention. However repeated low passes will result in a visit from you
local FAA inspector and possible certificate action"

That is right from the FAA and perhaps not word for word but you get
the idea. It may be interpreted differently at different FSDO's. But
it seems to mee that our FSDO has a very common sense approach to this
subject.

Brian Case
CFIIG/ASEL



Andy Blackburn wrote in message ...
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the interpretation
of the FAR's is correct - that busting 500' is, without
exception, a violation in any circumstance other than
final approach to landing. It is not clear to me that
this is necessarily the case, or enforced that way
by the FAA, but put that aside for now.

If we are going to abide by the letter of the law on
FARs, then busting 500' agl ANYWHERE on course should
be grounds for penalty. This could be DQ for the day,
scoring as if you landed at the spot where the infraction
occurred, or whatever is consistent with other FAR
violations under contest rules.

I believe this would include low saves as well as ridgeline
crossings and ridge soaring, etc. In other words, we
would need to enforce a 500' agl hard deck in the scoring
programs, which would need to include an accurate terrain
elevation database. I suspect this is technically not
that hard to do since programs like SeeYou already
have it.

Before going down that path, however, I would want
to see a definitive statement from official FAA sources
that this is in fact the correct interpretation of
the FARs AND that the FAA intends to enforce these
FARs to the letter of the law, rather than only in
those instances that show some form of recklessness
beyond the technicalities alone.

It would be a pity in my view if this happened as I
really like mountain flying and ridge soaring.

9B


At 19:00 03 October 2003, George William Peter Reinhart
wrote:
JJ,
You have a very good point.
Why not handle violations of the FAR's same way as
busting 18K?
No score for the day (or maybe DSQ for the contest).
Rules violations used to be handled that way at the
sailboat races in times
before political correctness was so much the vogue.
Cheers!, Pete


JJ Sinclair wrote in article
...
I flew the 111 at Mountain Home ('72-'74)

We have established that the 50 foot gate VIOLATES
the FAR's, So what are
we
going to do about that?

We have established that some pull-ups VIOLATE the
FAR's, So what are we
going
to do about that?

We have established that finishing over people, VIOLATES
the FAR's, So
what are
we going to do about that?
JJ Sinclair