I am a dedicated lurker and hate this topic to be my first post, but you have to start somewhere I guess. Sorry in advance for the length.

I am a full scale pilot for a living with 35 years of experience. I have been flying RC for 37 years. Here is what I think is going to happen.

The FAA will have to blame someone here. It's a "captain of the ship" mentality. They can only take enforcement action against someone they have authority over. The only person they can "enforce upon" is the full size pilot by suspending or revoking his license.They have no other "immediate" powers. More on that later.

I think their position is going to be that there was careless and reckless operation by the full scale pilot irregardless of the collision with the RC aircraft. There is no way that a high speed, 40 foot altitude for the length of the runway pass, SMOKE ON no less (hey y'all, watch this!), is going to be considered a normal go-around, missed approach, or whatever. Especially with a crowd standing right next to the runway. And it's on film. He will lose his license for some period of time. FS pilots do not "own" the sky, the feds do. Their policy is that flying is a privilige, and you can't just buzz around doing whatever. And even if people are standing on your runway, and you have the right of way, there is no way that you can claim you have the right to buzz them to get their attention or make them move. Even Waldo Pepper got in trouble for that one.

Many pilots have made high speed passes down a runway and then called it a "missed approach", but everyone knows he is just having a big time. And, well, it is fun. If the story gets out to the feds, the story is "well I was just doing a go around" and it's he said she said as there is no hard documentation. Of course they are never stupid enough to do it at an airport with a control tower. But here it's on film, and it's not just a runway, but a runway with a CF going on ten feet from the edge of it. Just because you have the right of way does not mean you can intentionally place your aircraft or others in danger, even if it's the other people being the stupid ones. The PIC is the one directly responsible for the safety of operation of his aircraft. So his license is toast for a while.

Everyone is talking big lawsuits. Even in our nutty legal system there has to be some accounting of damages. The FS pilot needs to repair his left lower wing, if I have the story right. This is a homebuilt aircraft. Look at Aircraft Spruce's catalog online. A lower wing spar for an Acroduster Too is $267 and a rib kit is $85. Add a couple hundred dollars for some covering and paint and you're up to what...$600? Sure he is out some labor, but he will have plenty of time to build as he won't be allowed to fly for a while. Even if he pays someone for the labor, I just don't see big numbers.

Of course he could also sue for things like pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of use of his aircraft, or some such legal nonsense, but he will probably look pretty stupid in front of a jury with his suspended pilot license (and a letter from the feds telling the whole world how stupid he was) while arguing all this. The RC pilot incurred a much greater financial loss, but I can't see him getting in front of a jury and saying "my $8000 toy airplane got run over by that big mean pilot", even if said pilot did get his license revoked.

The fly-in community could also see some repercussions from this. The FAA also has some jurisdiction over private runways.. Remember it is their sky. They will probably have to meet with the FAA and prove that they can continue to operate safely. I doubt they will lose their runway unless they are incredibly arrogant or stupid, but they will probably have to jump through some hoops. The so-called "air boss" will probably not be very popular for a while. And I wouldn't buy advance tickets for their next "air show."

The RC community has the most to lose. I stated earlier that the FAA has no "immediate" power over us. They can't show up and take away our RC license. However, they can have new regulations passed that affect our ability to fly in "their" sky. In fact, they are already engaged in this with their sUAS proposals and this incident gives them more ammunition to use against us. I see that one of the purposes of the AMA is to provide to the government a sense of our own self-regulation. Basically, if we regulate ourselves adequately, then the feds don't have to.

A good example is the scuba diving industry. There is no law that says you have to have a certificate to scuba dive. But the industry has set standards where it will not sell air fills to uncertified divers and dive boats will not carry them. Their own certification process provides the safety required by society, or at least they can argue that it does. Every so often there is a high profile accident and there are calls from some nut politician to regulate the industry. The industry jumps through some hoops, describes how responsible they are, and things calm down again until the next event.

The RC community has a big job in front of it. Unlike scuba diving where you basically just kill yourself, there is the potential for an RC aircraft / full scale collision to cause loss of life to others. Worse, loss of life to persons that are under the regulation and "protection" of the FAA. Not only can new FAA regulations over RC be considered a power grab, they are also a CYAfor the FAA as they will have to answer to congress, the press, and every nutjob media person for a high profile accident.. Luckily for us the full scale pilot in this case was not a politician or famous actor. I am glad to see that an AMA representative was dispatched to gather evidence, and I am sure the AMA is much more nervous than they are letting on over potential losses of our RC priviliges. They are most likely going to be jumping through a lot of hoops for us.

The main thing to be learned here is that one RC'er can cause grief to the entire community if there is a high profile event. I don't think that there is normally a lot of danger of this even with the so-called "unsafe" RC fliers, but when many odd events conspire as they did in this case, something bad really could happen. Short version, don't do stupid things and avoid stupid situations.

Something else to think about. The FAA has some smart and ambitious people working for them like any organization does. Many of them are young and technically literate. Imagine the evidence they could complile from our own internet forums from just using cut and paste. "Those kinds of fliers are dangerous!" "No, those guys are unsafe!" Two days of research and they could go to their boss and say "Gee, boss, even these guys consider themselves unsafe. Here's 4,720 pages of safety issues in their own words. How about I write some new regulations and get a big promotion?" Something to think about.

Now, back to lurking.

Bryan