ORIGINAL: Thomas B
ORIGINAL: CottcoRC
With the fear ofrocketing passion being limited or regulated to near extinction, a call was tothe AMA office to ask forclarification of the airlinepilot's wayward suggestions.The answers provided came from, thenAMA event coordinator, Greg Hahn, who, among other things said, ''when your rocket exceeds an altitude of 5,000' you'll need to apply for a permit...
I have not found that anyone in the AMA is a noted expert in model or high power rocketry.....and that airline pilot you speak of is one of those that suffers from the illusion that he, being an airline pilot, is therefore an expert about anything he brings his mind to bear on....
There is no permit required for model rockets as he thought and there is no 5k altitude limit after which you need a permit as stated by the AMA, as a simple perusal of the NAR and Tripoli web sites, as well as the FAA 101.21 rules on model rockets, will show.
Basically model and mid power rockets weighing up to 3.3lbs with no more than 4.4 oz of propellant do not require a "permit" or waiver of any kind.
(updated in 2009..previously, mid power models needed a notification to the local FAA entity before launch) High power rockets with power greater than a G motor of 160n/s (or a model with multiple motors of more than 320n/s) require an FAA airspace waiver for a specific site, time and date to be legally operated. However, it is a very rare model or mid power rocket that exceeds 5k agl. The power limits for model and mid power rockets do have the effect of limiting altitude to less than 5K feet, in the very vast majority of cases.
As model rockets and even high power rockets tend to operate for only a few moments in the national airspace, they are not considered to be all that much of an issue...they simply do not have the persistence of duration that model aircraft and sUAS aircarft have. Even the high alitude high power models typically have a system that delays primary recovery system opening until the rocket has fallen back to a low altitude...the larger HP models rarely much time hanging under a chute above 500-1000 feet, as no one wants to chase it for miles......
A side note to LCS...your previously mentioned hope in post 8 in this thread is granted, in terms of who may obtain FAA waivers, if the same process holds true for waivers related to model aircraft operations. FAA waviers for rocket operations have been granted to national groups, local clubs without national affilation, educational entities and even to informal goups and single individuals that have requested one.