Floating in the Winter Sky, 99 Red Balloons Go By.....

Mylar balloons and the DoD's jonesing to play with its new laser toys may have caused the El Paso and Santa Teresa TFRs this morning. It may also have been the result of a bureaucratic pissing contest between the DoD and the FAA.

No matter what was going down, it looks like yet another Federal clusterfuck as the Boyos From Fort Fumble want to screw around with their new shit, which disrupted the travel plans of thousands of people and screwed with cargo commerce.

El Paso TFR

And the FAA lifted the ten-day El Paso TFR after several hours.

Incompetence? A test to see if anyone was paying attention?

The Tombstone Agency

The timing of the FAA’s emergency airworthiness directive (AD) addressing possible corrosion in tail assemblies of de Havilland Canada DHC–3 Otters is under scrutiny from industry leaders.

The FAA released the emergency AD last week. Transport Canada issued a similar AD more than four years ago. AD CF-2018-04 was issued by Transport Canada on January 19, 2018, in response to corrosion found on DHC-3 tail assemblies. The AD established a requirement for inspecting the aircraft’s elevators for corrosion, which can lead to structural failure and result in an uncommanded nose-down pitch moment.

Last month, a deHavilland DHC-3 Turbine Otter operated by Northwest Seaplanes went down in Mutiny Bay off Whidbey Island in Washington. According to witnesses, the aircraft was flying at an altitude of approximately 600 feet above the surface when it suddenly plunged into the water, killing all 10 people on board.

The FAA tends to operate on the basis of "no fatalities, no problem", which they have for decades. Nothing's changed.

Dear FAA, I Toljaso, You Meatheads

Something strange has been going on in the friendly skies over the last day or so. Flights are being canceled. Aircraft are grounded. Passengers are understandably upset. The core of the issue is GPS and ADS-B systems.

I have said, over and over again, that cutting back the VOR network was a stupid move.

And so it has come to pass.

Knee-Jerk Reaction From the Biggest Jerk

UPDATE: I was wrong about this.

The U.S. is issuing an emergency order Wednesday grounding all Boeing 737 Max 8 and Max 9 aircraft “effective immediately,” in the wake of the crash of an Ethiopian Airliner that killed 157 people, President Donald Trump said.

Many nations had already barred the Boeing 737 Max 8 from its airspace, but until Trump’s announcement, the Federal Aviation Administration had said that it didn’t have any data to show the jets are unsafe. Trump cited “new information” that had come to light in the ongoing investigation into incident. He did not elaborate.

I am skeptical as all fuck.

One of the persistent gripes about many non-Western airlines fall into three categories. First is an inability, whether cultural or otherwise, to adopt "Cockpit Resource Management" in place of "The Captain is God". The latter mindset was, in part, behind the Asiana Airlines crash at SFO. The second is "G-d wills it"-- that if things are falling to shit, it's the will of the Almighty and there is nothing to be done. The third is that a number of pilots in non-Western airlines are "ab initio" pilots-- they did not know how to fly before being hired. They start from day one as future airline pilots. All of their flying and flight training is to that goal. So they become more systems managers than pilots (the deprecatory term is "Children of the Magenta Line"). They are not stick-and-rudder pilots.

I'm not saying that a lack of piloting skills is behind the crashes, or lack of maintenance. There is a significant and detailed investigation ahead. The data transmitted in flight as well as the data/voice recorders all need to be examined. But given that both -Max crashes have happened to Third World airlines, I am skeptical that it's an airframe issue.

One of the truisms of aviation has been when all else fails, default to pilot error. Without information as to cause, grounding all of the airplanes is a knee-jerk reaction. (I have a flight later this Spring. I would have happily taken the trip on a 737 Max.)

Tab Clearing

Fifty people, including Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, were charged Tuesday in a scheme in which wealthy parents allegedly bribed college coaches and other insiders to get their children into some of the nation’s most elite schools.

Federal authorities called it the biggest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department, with the parents accused of paying an estimated $25 million in bribes.

There's a lot of fuckery going on there. Bribing test proctors, faking disabilities, getting picked up for college sports teams without being able to play them. This is the list of folks charged, so far.
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The Brits are on the path of crashing out of the EU with no agreement.

Prime Minister Theresa May's EU withdrawal deal has been rejected by MPs for a second time, throwing her Brexit strategy into further confusion.

MPs voted down her deal by 391 to 242 - a smaller defeat than when they rejected it in January.

The PM said MPs will now get a vote on whether the UK should leave without a deal on 29 March and, if that fails, on whether Brexit should be delayed.

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Countries are banning the 737-Max from flying in their airspace:

The European Union and India have banned the Boeing 737 Max from flying over their airspace to ensure passenger safety.

They join a long list of countries in suspending the plane, including the UK.

As of today, the Canadian and American authorities have done so. The FAA has been known to wait for hard evidence of a problem before ordering a grounding. Meanwhile, the World's Oldest Toddler has an opinion.

"Light" Sport Aviation News

RUMINT has it that the FAA may be in the works of redefining a "light sport aircraft". In essence, the weight limit would be increased from 1,300 lbs to 3,600 lbs. I don't know if the FAA is thinking about increasing the 120kt speed restriction for LSAs, but, with ADS-B, they may have some data as to what speeds LSAs are really flown at.

The attraction for LSAs is that no medical certification paperwork is required. But, and this is a "but" that gets ignored, every time a LSA (or Basic Med) pilot flies, that pilot is certifying that he or she has no disqualifying medical conditions.

What this means is that if there is a problem that results in bending metal or attracts the FAA's attention, you can get in some trouble for essentially fibbing about being fit to fly. The insurance company can deny coverage.

So if you have a disqualifying medical condition, LSA gets you nothing more than what has been traditionally available: Gliders, balloons, and single-seat ultralights.

Gee, Thanks, Obama!

For turning the FAA into an agency that has gone fully into regulatory-capture mode.

60 Minutes spent two segments on Allegiant Air last night.

While 60 Minutes has been known for slanted pieces, this one made it clear that the FAA's attitude toward Allegiant Air pretty much is that they don't intend to do anything until Allegiant kills some passengers. This is because three years ago, the Obama Administration shifted the FAA from enforcement to cheerleading.

In TV cop terms, they've gone from this:

To this:

Because that coffee won't drink itself!

For right now, it would seem that saving a few bucks on a trip might not be worth either your life or, at least, the risk of breathing in hazardous fumes. Of course, look to Allegiant to adopt the Trumpist tactic of screaming "false news".

(Yep, they did.)

ADS-B Getting Cheaper

I've not been thrilled about ADS-B. The gear has, so far, been about $2,500-$4,000, not including installation and maybe other stuff you'd need. That's enough that, if you don't fly into areas where you'd need it, it's not going to be worth the expense. Rumor has it that post-installation calibration and testing of the ADS-B sets is not a non-issue.

Even the pros are getting frustrated by ADS-B.

I'll bet that a lot of FLIBs that have transponders and don't fly IFR or go into Class B/C airspace have opted to ignore ADS-B. An informal survey of owners at my home airport has shown that only the owners of twins and higher-end singles have installed ADS-B, and not even all of them, yet. Many are betting that the price is going to come down because of owner reluctance to install higher-end sets. I thing that's a good gamble.

Drone Away

Hobbyists' drones may not have to register with the FAA:

A D.C.-based appeals court struck down a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rule on Friday requiring recreational drone users to register their model aircraft with the federal government, in a major win for drone hobbyists.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with plaintiff John A. Taylor, a recreational drone pilot, who argued that the FAA doesn’t have the power to make him register his toy drones because Congress already said the FAA can’t regulate model aircraft.

“The FAA’s 2015 registration rule, which applies to model aircraft, directly violates that clear statutory prohibition,” the opinion said. “We therefore grant Taylor’s petition and vacate the registration rule to the extent it applies to model aircraft.”

This could get very interesting. What size does a drone have to be in order to be considered a "model aircraft"? There are some pretty honking huge model airplanes out there.

Cirrus Jet and FAA Gobbledygook

The FAA is proposing a special rule that doesn't require Cirrus to flight-test the operation of the parachute system of its new SF-50 jet:

The applicant (Cirrus) does not have to prove or demonstrate that the system works in flight.

Maybe I'm not fully functioning this morning. But what I gather is this: Cirrus is making a single-engine jet. A big selling point of the airplane, for Cirrus, is that if shit goes sideways, the pilot only has to trigger the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System and float down onto whatever is below (open fields, power lines, day-care centers, etc.). They don't have to demonstrate that it really works because in the SF50, the parachute is only a marketing tool, not a required system.

The FAA doesn't think it's worth testing because the parachute gizmo, in the SF50, isn't a standalone system, like it is in Cirrus's prop jobs. The parachute system in the jet interfaces with the flight control system and so they think it's not worth pulling the pin for a live flight test.

I suspect what really happened is that Cirrus, and their congressional reps, whined about a test probably ending up destroying a two-million dollar airplane. To which I say: "So what? That's life in the big leagues." Destroying multi-million dollar bits of equipment to prove that they're safe is par for the course.

Comments to the proposed rule are open through May 2nd.

Shorter FAA: "We Think ADS-B is Essential for All Aircraft, But We'll Let the DoD Fuck With It Anytime They Want."

TCAS and ADS-B is "unreliable" all over the coastal Southeast U.S. for this entire month:

!FDC 5/2402 ZJX SC..SPECIAL NOTICE...DUE TO MILITARY ACTIVITIES ON
1030/1090 MHZ, THE TRAFFIC ALERT AND COLLISION AVOIDANCE SYSTEM
(TCAS) AND AUTOMATIC DEPENDENT SYSTEM BROADCAST (ADS-B)
SURVEILLANCE MAY BE UNRELIABLE IN THE AIRSPACE OVER THE STATES OF
VIRGINIA, NORTH CAROLINA, SOUTH CAROLINA, GEORGIA, AND FLORIDA, AND
EXTENDING APPROXIMATELY 200NM OFFSHORE. SFC-FL500.
PILOTS ARE ADVISED THAT THE TRAFFIC ALERT AND COLLISION AVOIDANCE
SYSTEM (TCAS) MAY FAIL TO ESTABLISH TRACKS ON NEARBY AIRCRAFT AND
MAY FAIL TO RECEIVE TRAFFIC ALERTS (TA) AND/OR RESOLUTION ADVISORIES
(RA). FURTHER, PILOTS ARE ADVISED THAT TRACKS MAY FIRST APPEAR
WITHIN CLOSE PROXIMITY TO THEIR AIRCRAFT AND MAY IMMEDIATELY GO INTO
TA/RA STATUS. FALSE ALERTS ARE NOT EXPECTED TO BE GENERATED BY THIS
MILITARY ACTIVITY AND ANY ALERTS SHALL BE TREATED AS REAL. PILOTS
ARE ADVISED TO MAINTAIN AN INCREASED VISUAL AWARENESS IN THIS AREA.
IF THE PILOT BELIEVES THAT AN AIRCRAFT SHOULD HAVE TRIGGERED AN
ALERT, THE INCIDENCE SHOULD BE REPORTED TO AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL AT
THE EARLIEST OPPORTUNE MOMENT.
1509020500-1510100459

So the Foes of All Aviation want us to spend many AMUs to upgrade our airplanes to use ADS-B, which they want to use as the foundation of ATC, but then they'll allow the military to fuck with it whenever it suits them?

How does this make sense? (Yeah, I know, expecting the FAA to make sense is a fool's game.)

FAA: Dumb Rule, Guys

The FAA is proposing scrapping a boatload of VOR and ILS approaches. You can read the rule here. If the link doesn't work, go to regulations.gov and look for rule FAA-2015-0783.

My opinion is that this rule is a bad idea. Placing instrument approaches in the GPS basket without any degree of redundancy is foolish. If there is a navigation system in use that is more vulnerable to interference, sabotage or space weather than GPS, I don't know what it is.

There was a time when aviators had shitloads of redundancy. VOR stations are stand-alone, in that what booted one station off-line wouldn't screw up another. And for decades, a network of AM navigation beacons provided redundancy.

But GPS? Not so much. Every so often there is a NOTAM out that has a few hundred thousand square miles of area where GPS is unreliable due to some testing by the government of something or other. GPS can be spoofed or completely shut down over an area by any clown with an ability to read a schematic and wield a soldering tool. We haven't had a bad stretch of space weather, yet, but when we do, will we be back to flying airliners in VFR conditions only?

Besides that, if we ever have a hot war with a technologically-capable nation, expect the GPS system to come under almost immediate attack. Our potential adversaries know that our military has a crap-ton of "smart" ordnance that uses GPS for navigation. It doesn't take a Sun-Tzu level military thinker to understand the benefits of disabling an enemy's navigation capabilities.

This all ties into the stupid shit that the government should operate like a business instead of a public-benefit service. Public services aren't fucking businesses. Sure, they ought to be run efficiently and fraud and abuse should be countered. But we've gone too far.

And as for the Federal government being captured by corporations, that's a topic for another day.

Do I Need a CPL to Take Aerial Photographs and Video?

I've taken both aerial photos and in-flight videos. The videos get posted to YouTube before I put them here. I've posted aerial photos on Facebook.

Both YouTube and Facebook have ads. I don't see any of the money from them.

One would think that neither activity on my part would be a commercial one, in that I'm not getting paid.

But if a drone driver posts video on YouTube, now the FAA thinks that's a commercial use of the drone?

How nuts is that?

And even if one films something and the images can later be sold, unless one set out on the flight with the intent of making money from it, it's a hard stretch to argue that the flight was a commercial one.

Shorter Ferguson PD on the No-Media TFR: "Warn't Us, Boss!"

Update on this post: The St. Louis County police chief denies that he asked for the TFR. Not only that, but the cops are claiming that the FAA forced the TFR on them, that it wasn't their idea, nosiree.

The chief's characterization of FAA managers as "a couple of air traffic controllers" will probably offend both the FAA brass and the real scope-jockeys.

I fall back on the point that I asserted in the previous post: The operating assumption is that the cops are lying.

Toljaso, Ferguson TFR Edition

Remember when the FAA imposed a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) over Ferguson and some of us thought that it was there to keep those pesky news helicopters away, so the cops could more easily get away with whatever fuckery they had in mind?

That was exactly the reason for it. The justifications proclaimed at the time were bullshit. Not only were they bullshit, the cops kept clinging to their bullshit until it was clear, even to them, that the truth was coming out.

Here's a general rule: Whenever the police brass make public pronouncements on any topic in the news, every word they say is a lie, including the conjunctions and the articles, until proven otherwise.

Hey, FAA, Foxtrot Oscar Alpha Delta; ADS-B Edition

According to FAR 91.225, the FAA wants me to to equip my old airplane with the crap necessary to broadcast to ADS-B by 2020.

Thing is, I don't fly anywhere that I need to be able to do that. I don't fly IFR and, by my count, I've been above 10,000' MSL exactly once.

In order to comply with the rule, I'd have to put a piece of kit into my airplane that will cost five or six grand or so, and that's just for the box(es). It doesn't factor in the cost of installation.

So the FAA wants me to spend six large or so to install a piece of electronics that does nothing for me.

Here's a better idea: Since I don't fly anyway where I would need ADS-B(out), I also don't fly in airspace where I would need a Mode C transponder. So if I'm not going to install ADS-B, then I might as well just rip out the fucking Mode C transponder. That'll be less crap to maintain.

p.s., AOPA, thanks for nothing.

FAA Backs Off Sleep-Apnea Witch-Hunt (for now)

The FAA told aviation groups Thursday it will delay implementation of the new sleep apnea testing policy that was to begin in January 2014. The FAA said it will gather additional input from the aviation and medical communities.

That was the Dirksen Rule* in operation. The FAA normally doesn't make changes to the details of medical standards by formal rulemaking and they weren't going to here. But the pilot groups and the aviation grassroots were gearing up to jam that one back down the FAA's throat with legislation, if they didn't back off. The FAA probably was afraid that they'd be saddled with having to go through the rulemaking process for any future tweaking of medical standards and so they changed their minds.

Word I heard was that the FAA's chief doctor is retiring anyway; there is a chance that some clown on his staff snuck this one in and then he got stuck with having to defend an ill-considered policy. The top brass at the FAA was likely more than happy to throw him under the bus.
_____________________
* "I see the light when I feel the heat."

Expecting the FAA to Make Any Sense is Like Expecting Congress to Do Its Job

The FAA is mulling over whether or not to let some angle-of-attack indicators be installed in small airplanes without a Supplemental Type Certificate.

Mostly, the FAA is not in favor of it. They want the AOA manufacturers to get STCs.

This makes no sense. It's pretty hard to find anyone who is familiar with AOA indicators who doesn't think that they're the best safety addition to aircraft since shoulder harnesses. The mantra of carrier pilots is "meatball (glideslope), lineup, angle-of-attack". If you fly with the AOA in the green, you won't stall out. Which means that in a landing pattern, you won't get into the "stall-spin-crash-burn-die" cycle.

But hey, the FAA says that the files must be papered. Doesn't matter how many people die. The AOA makers aren't going to get STCs for airplanes that don't have thousands of candidates.

This is reminsicent of the FAA's former insistence that one had to have an STC or field approval to install retrofit shoulder harnesses. Eventually, it got through the FAA's extremely dense collective skull that a hell of a lot of people were getting killed or horribly disfigured because older airplane didn't have shoulder harnesses and the reason the owners didn't install them was because the FAA was making it almost impossible to do so. Because when you ask for a "field approval", that goes to the local Flight Standards District Office. The responsible guy in the Fairbanks FSDO might say: "Hey, this is a good idea, do it" while the throwback in the Jackson office might have taken the position that "if they were meant to be installed, Bill Piper would have installed them". (Names of FSDOs pulled at random, so STFU.)

If AOA indicators are a good idea, let's let owners fucking install them.

Ah, the Faint Whiff of Corruption; FAA Edition

So it seems that the FAA's witch-hunt against fat pilots by requiring them to have sleep studies has its roots with a doctor whose company-

Wait for it--



-Does sleep studies! So no shit that they are advocating for more sleep studies.

Pretty sweet gig: Serve as a special medical advisor to the FAA and, if the FAA acts on your advice, your company makes a lot more money.

"Self-dealing" is probably the kindest term that comes to mind.