RE: Waiver question
 

Let me rephrase: 510-a.doc page 3 2)For fixed wing and rotary wing only: The qualification flight will be performed with a turbine powered model. The applicant must first have flown the turbine powered model on a buddy box with an experienced turbine pilot in control of the master transmitter.

RE: Waiver question
 

I thought the qualification flight did NOT have to be on a turbine aircraft, but just an aircraft which could fly at least 100 mph...

RE: Waiver question
 

As I read Carls letter it seems to me he is talking about a willfull act that common
sense would tell you that someone is likely to be hurt or is very dangerous.

To me flying a 100lb plane or a turbine without waiver does not fall in this
catgory especially if you are alone or with someone you can trust.

RE: Waiver question
 

hey chipperg, as you can see. this topic is no longer about you.... LOL

if you like, PM me you number and i will answer any questions you have


Mark

RE: Waiver question
 

I guess I’ll throw my two cents worth in here.

As many have pointed out, any where an AMA member flies, the AMA is insuring you. If you are flying your park flier at the park and take out the wind shield of a car, and you have no other insurance, the AMA will pay to fix it. Every Monday morning the AMA gets lots of these calls.

At one time the AMA insurance did have language that would invalidate the insurance if you where operating outside the safety code. But as I understand it, and for reasons I do not understand, an insurance company asked that that be removed. So the AMA does not have a really good way to get out of covering you.

And now to the real point:

As Dr. Sandy Frank put it, in an EC meeting, “The safety code is a gentlemen’s agreement”.

When you join the AMA you are entering into an agreement; in exchange for the benefits and coverage they provide, you will pay your dues and follow the safety code. If you are an honorable person you up hold your side of the agreement. If you can not agree to the terms, then you do not join. It is perfectly honorable to disagree, not join, and operate any model in any manner you like at any site that will accept your terms, and there are folks that do this all over the country.

In the end you can do pretty much anything you want. There are no police out there who will weight your model or check your speed out on the dry lake bed, the local school yard, or the local airport that lets you fly there. It is just between you and your conscience (what would Abraham Lincoln do?).

Steven Ellzey
President, Jet Pilot’s Organization

RE: Waiver question
 

Steve

You make some valid points but I cant totaly agree with you, however the main
reason I joined the AMA was because I had to in order to have a place to fly
and i think that applies to many other members as well, that being said I see
no reason not to fly a certain type of plane just because the safety code says
otherwise.

The way i see it some who post here think the AMA should have its cake and eat
the cake too. But as long as what im doing is not hurting anyone I see no reason
not to and i consider myself to be honorable.

Now I understand that at a chartered field if the club tells you cant do somthing
its best not make waves and tell them will do as you please but elsewhere that
is a different story.

I would bet their are lot of AMA members that are in the military and work for
Nasa and Lockheed and such that fly UAV'S and other models that are outside
of the Scope of the AMA safety code all the time.

To make it plane and to the point it unreasonable for the AMA to think just because
you are a member there is no way you can do certain things at anytime or anyplace
especialy since 985% of the flying sites in the USA require you be an AMA member.

RE: Waiver question
 

Hi Ira,

Since I am a Lockheed Martin Engineer, and have been approached by management in discussions of taking on the piloting duties of a UAV if the equipment gets moved to our facility, I think I can respond to some of your comments fairly well.

If I where operating a UAV for LM, I would be fully indemnified by the company. So if there where an accident, I would be fully covered no matter what the out come. This would also clearly be a case of commercial operation, and the AMA has absolutely no involvement in that area. If someone tried to sue the AMA out of an accident in such a case it would almost certainly be thrown out the first time a judge looked at it. Just image the opposite, I have an accident with one of my models at the model field and someone tries to sue LM because I fly UAVs for them and they cover me for that.

Why should the AMA care what you do away from a chartered club site; as stated before, they cover their members no matter where they fly. What if you are flying a model outside the safety code at a local airport and something goes wrong and you take out a 5 million dollar biz jet. What is going to happen? Your personal insurance probably runs out at 2 – 3 million and someone is looking at you for 5. Are you going to tell the folks, who you strongly suspect are getting ready to file suit against you and others, that you where operating outside the national safety code, and therefore they can not involve the AMA? Are you going to testify to the jury that “why yes, I knew that I was operating in a manner that the national safety code says is unsafe, therefore it is only my problem”? Nope, You the AMA and your normal insurance company are all going to become best friends, and everyone is going to try and keep the safety code out of it in order to minimize the damage, accidents get compensation, recklessness gets punitive damages. Let’s say that operating outside the safety code contributed to the accident. Now the AMA is out a couple of million because you did something that they asked you not to do. How fair is that?

The better answer to all of this is to reform the civil legal system so that we all have less concern about legal repercussions surrounding un-intentional accidents.

Steven Ellzey
President, Jet Pilot’s Organization

RE: Waiver question
 

Hi Steve

To me it does not matter if you have another form of insurance
if we follow your previous line of thinking according to you it would be
dishornable to break the safety code at any time or anyplace.

It would seem to me if someone was flying a turbine without a waiver
and took out a 5mil bus jet all the AMA would have to show is that
person did not have a waiver and any case aganist them would be
dismissed.

Look im not against haveing a safety code im just saying no one can
expect there not be some exceptions if you are not flying at a AMA
field. Also common sense has to come into play if someone did somthing
really stupid or intentional to harm someone or cause damage then
if the AMA can prove such they would be of the hook.

RE: Waiver question
 

Gordon

I can take a half a dozen passages from the quoted Carl e-mail that exactly supports my conclusions just as the highlighted ones support your conclusions. The e-mail is ambigious at best and means nothing as far as a definition of AMA insurance coverage is concerned. There are two truths here regardless what Carl wrote:

1. Before there can be a denial of coverage there must be a "CLAIM!"
2. A contested "Claim" is going to be judicated by lawyers and a civil court judge!

There are thousands of possibilities that could fall anywhere between #1 & #2!! My guess is that each of those possibilities would be handled on a case by case basis and AMA is not going to go out LOOKING for cases to solve!

Having said all that I am both an AMA member and a JPO member and make an effort to abide by the rules and support both organizations with my dollars. That does not mean that I take every word one of their officers write as the GOSPEL. It also means they could be right and I am wrong! I have long felt that the AMA has never served the needs of the Jet community but rather they have taken many positions that point to them protecting the AMA FROM the Jet community. I think the JPO and it's officers have done a great job in trying to reverse that trend.

Chipperg, good luck on getting your waiver there are a lot of great people out there to help you!

RE: Waiver question
 

There is nothing in Carl’s email that indicates that a claim has to exist before member could be suspended or expelled, so anyone who wilfully ignores the safety code could still be penalised by the ama even if there is no claim.

BTW, Carl has apparently moved on and his responsibilities now lie with a different AMA official. I have an email out to Joyce to see who is now the correct person to check with to see whether there is any change in the official AMA position to go with the change in official.

Gordon

RE: Waiver question
 

Almost every time I go to the flying field I see someone violating some part of
the safety code but I have never heard of anyone being expelled from the AMA.
Not to say it cant happen but I also doubt the AMA is going around looking for
people to expell.

RE: Waiver question
 

The AMA may not be looking for people to expel, but there are other people out there that will turn you in to the AMA, and then they have to respond.

RE: Waiver question
 

No doubt their are a few bored people out there that just might. But like i said
i see alot of safety violations and have yet to see anyone call the AMA.

RE: Waiver question
 

Why do we put so much energy into following all of the AMA rules when they are the LAST to step up to the plate!!!!!!!!! We should be gov. by the home owners ins we carry. What do you guys think?

RE: Waiver question
 

I'd personally welcome having the choice to opt-out of the AMA rules any time we wanted to (and rely on my homeowners & PUP instead), but unfortunately "wishing it were so" doesn't seem to have changed reality yet ;)

IMO, the main reason most of us need AMA membership (and why we therefore care to varying degrees about whether we risk losing that membership) is that the vast majority of the flying sites we want to use would be off-limits to us if we were not AMA members.

Some clubs have permitted their members to fly without AMA membership, but not many. The overhead of the club having to check each member's home-ownership insurance status can be significant ; other schemes such as dual AMA/SFA use of a given facility have been tried with limited success (and some such as my old club have met with bullying from the AMA to try to force them to return to AMA-only status).

Lastly - not everyone DOES put a lot of energy into following the AMA rules. You can bust a whole lot of rules without getting penalised, just like you can drive over the speed limit a lot of the time without getting penalised. That doesn't mean that the AMA can't decide to inflict their stated punishment options, any more than my lack of speeding tickets means that the CHP can't pull me over tomorrow and hammer me for driving the exact same speed as I drove past a CHP car yesterday.

My point in highlighting the AMA's position / threat of potential membership withdrawal is not to try to be the guy who's keeping everyone in line ; instead I simply want to ensure that when people ask things like "Is it OK to bust the AMA rules as long as I don't care about having AMA insurance coverage for those few flights", that they are aware of the AMA's position on potential punishments and can therefore make reasonably educated decisions rather than being fed misinformation that "it's OK - the AMA can't do anything".

Gordon

RE: Waiver question
 

I thought this would be a good topic.

RE: Waiver question
 

I just found this forum and the topic is riveting! I tend to agree with most everything that Gordan has said. My field is chartered by AMA so I follow ALL AMA rules. That doesn't mean I like them all, I just choose to obey them. My first F-14 Tomcat happens to be a turbine powered airplane that weighs 32 lbs and flies at 234 MPH according to to radar gun. I DO NOT fly it because I do not have a waiver. A friend (a d%*n good one) does since he has a waiver and 3 turbines of his own. And he live over 4 hours away! I am building a second F-14 that will be EDF powered so I can fly it, here. I don't agree with all of the AMA rules but I respect and follow them. I started in this hobby about 7 years ago and over that time I've come to believe that they've helped me a lot more than they've hurt me.

Good topic, worth the read and will follow it.

RE: Waiver question
 

David,
234 mph is breaking the AMA rules....of course it wasn't actually you flying at 234 mph.....

RE: Waiver question
 

I guess David follows the rules but his friend does not. anyway
David you should fly on the buddy box with your friend the AMA
is ok with that.

RE: Waiver question
 

It was nice of you guys to write back. First, let me say my radar gun was calibrated by the same firm that does them for the NC State Troopers and one of their radar units clocked an OAK tree doing 50 in a school zone so I'm not really sure how fast my plane was going. Second, I don't fly on a buddy box since I had a stroke back in 2004 and my right side has a long way to go right now. I still build but since I only use 1 hand right now I go pretty darn slow. My second F-14 will hopefully ready by next fall and maybe I will too. Until then I'll build, I'll watch and I'll continue to read and learn. I have others fly my planes because I love to see my planes fly and I just love to be around R/C planes and people! I have my friend fly my turbine F-14 at 135 - 150 mph since it's a lot easier to photograph at that speed. It's a shame he couldn't get it to stay in the air at 40 - 50 mph. He had (I admit I did too) to see how fast it would go, at least once.

David

RE: Waiver question
 

We have a unique situation at our field. We are on Metro Park property. We have an AMA Charter and a local club. The park requires a permit to fly. In order to get the permit, you must prove at least 300k in liability ins. Most comply with AMA membership. Some take their homeowners policy down to the park office and get it with that. The park does not destinguish turbine or non turbine, only model aircraft. So, what happens if a non AMA member, flying a turbine (perfectly legal), happens to crash and cause damage? Also, what happens when an AMA member who is not a waiver holder, (again, perfectly legal- in the parks eyes), crashes and causes damage?
Sadly, both scenarios, we probably loose a nice place to fly.

RE: Waiver question
 

First off you dont have to crash a turbine to cause the loss of a flying site it really
will depend on the particular incident and damage caused by the incident.

If someone did crash and cause damage or injury hopefuly their insurance be it
AMA or some other type would take care of it and that would be the end of the
matter.IMO turbines are no different than other models except that some fly
faster than the avarage model and there is higher risk of a post crash fire in
some cases.

RE: Waiver question
 

A few days ago I submitted a question to the AMA Support Center about non-waivered pilots flying at a non-AMA field. I've just received the following response:

RE: Waiver question
 

<<With all that said I am sure you’ll understand that I would strongly recommend not operating your turbine without having the necessary waiver in place. Presuming that you have the necessary proficiency level, you can perform the required demo flight qualification with a non-turbine powered model.

Best regards,

Ilona Maine >>

She never did answer the question as to loosing your membership if you did fly at a non ama evevt or site!!

RE: Waiver question
 

No, but the way I read her response is that it would be a violation of the AMA membership agreement, and leaves punishment of the member up to some other official(s) of the AMA. And it puts the entire AMA insurance program at risk...