"Nik" wrote:
While surfing in 2003, when I lived in Wilmington, NC saw a Pitts
flying about 20 feet high and 200-300 feet from the shore, probably
doing around 100kts. How legal was he? Do have any nice experiences
about Beach Runs?

When I lived near Santa Cruz in California, a fair number of pilots
would fly low just off shore. There were times I knew they were
violating the FARs - there are houses actually on the beach and often
surfers in the water, and planes on rare occasions sometimes flew so low
you had to look _down_ at them from the cliff top - a typical cliff
height is shown he

http://www.californiacoastline.org/c... year=current

Here's where houses sit on the water (this looks to be at low tide):

http://www.californiacoastline.org/c... year=current

I think the biggest problem with buzzing the shoreline in that area is a
higher risk of bird strikes. When schools of fish are just off shore,
the number of birds in the air goes way up.