ORIGINAL: Rcpilot
We've been following the 400' limit set forth by AMA for years and years. Since our club is only about 5 miles from a full scale airport, we try and regulate ourselves to 400' above ground level anyway.
See paragraph 2 - sub section (C)
http://www.modelaircraft.org/files/105.PDF
I don't know what all the fuss is about. 400 feet above ground level is pretty darn high for normal, every day flying. Why would you need to fly higher than 400' above the ground?
I can see an IMAC contest where large planes will exceed that during uplines, and I could see a pattern plane exceeding 400' on an upline. But those instances are rare when compared to the number of RC flights being flown on a daily basis.
We've put monitoring devices in a UAV that I work on part-time. It's a long ways up to 1200 feet above ground level. A 44lb UAV starts looking pretty darn small up there. I can't imagine flying a glow or gasoline powered RC model up to 1000 feet above ground level. I've flown thermal gliders up over 1500 feet above ground level. Gliders with 150'' wingspans look like a
DOT at that altitude.
So why all the fuss over a 400' limit?
I'm not sure what kind of flying you are doing- but when I fly my pattern or IMAC planes I am flying multiple manuevers that are difficult to keep under 400 feet- humpty bumps, stall turns, vertical 8's, even looping manuevers would encroach or exceed 400ft.
Many sport flyers basically fly a racetrack pattern and I guess that's OK for them- but not for me.
You might also be flying a lot higher than you think you are. Keep me honest on my math but, by my calculations, at 60mph a plane is traveling 88ft every second. Assuming you are flying even 50 feet above the ground, if you were to pull vertical and maintain speed you'd be past 400 feet in about 4-5 seconds. If you count it out, that's not very long- and I bet many of us are flying faster than 60mph.