Hi Beave,

I hear you, I have heard different things over the years. i remember mention of the so called "Phil Kraft decision" wherein it was questioned whether a manufacturer was_ever_covered personally byt he AMA, not just at demos but at any time. I must say if what you say is true then I wonder why such a simple rule is not called out, these demo flights occur all of the time.

The related question is whether the sponsoring company has general business insurance for said pilots, then the issue of personally liability is somewhat muted.

A bigger question in my mind is the first dollar land owner coverage., do sponsored flying affect that? And am I sponsored when I fly any time, just when it is announced at an event, when I post about it on the internet and then fly later??? Big can of worms, just go to any heli event at the AMA site in Muncie, 50% of the pilots are sponsored!


Back to today's FAA ruling, this is great news I believe. no mention of turbines, no mention of altitude. I was worried about this distance to an airport thing, but the AMA has seen that one coming for a long time and has form letters prepared for any clubs that need to formalize their agreements. kind of scary but could have been (much) worse.

For FPV, the goggle FPV guys just took one right to the heart, I figured this would happen as I just bought my first set of goggles!! My fault.

The AMA has been trying to cozy up to the FPV guys for a couple of years, will be interesting to see what the AMA's take is. Right now if you operate FPV per AMA rules, you will be in violation of this FAA finding, pure and simple.