I guess that means that people shouldn't answer any questions, even innocent questions, about their job because that might open the door to anything.
As I remember it ...
No need to guess. Scroll up and read it.
Then there are the people who rant about never having met a government employee who isn't mediocre and unmotivated. That's like saying all small airplane pilots are dangerous. We don't like to be stereotyped in that way and neither do government workers. Of course there are unmotivated government employees and dangerous pilots but not across the board. Unfortunately its the bad ones who give the others that reputation.
Yes there are those people who say that. I did not.
Nate,
I just went back and read every post kmox made on this thread. He never attacked you, but you've really gone after him. He even said "I'm not trying to justify anything, just providing some reasons why this happens." AKA, insight.
Keep believing that. He have two very questionable answers. And I questioned them with only one example. A softball example.
He wasn't the OP - He was just trying to answer questions brought up in the thread.
He failed then bailed. Oh well.
And why is it his duty to you to justify everything the FAA does? He's not the administrator. He came here for fun. I bet he doesn't even know who sets those policies, and if it irks you so much, you should be talking to your congressman, not a pawn who's here voluntarily.
Let's see. Whom would I call to ask these questions of on the phone? Oh yeah. An inspector. Duh.
If he doesn't know who sets policy, he shouldn't be saying he knows why in a public forum, right? Like I said, personal problem.
And letting it stand there vs. making an issue of it and attacking him was your call. And that was a bad call for our community.
Nope. Didn't attack. Responded to his assertion that a) his day job is inspector and b) he knew why FSDOs are completely inconsistent.
His whining and running off instead of just saying, "Gosh. You're right. We have decades of Chief Counsel letters we can't even properly codify into law, so we just let the lawyer write it... And we have lots of stuff we should be able to easily create Advisory Circulars on so everyone knows where we stand, but we don't..." isn't what I expected. Or any other of a million ways to respond to a customer other than "I'm taking my ball and going home."
Yes! Maybe not directly, but the FAA answers to the president and congress and they answer to us, and by us I do not mean pilots, I mean everyone - Including all of the people who HATE GA. And there's more haters than pilots.
Plus, in this day and age of liability ruling all, the most conservative possible interpretation of every rule would be the only way they would standardize.
Finally... If you really want black and white, we can do things the way the rest of the world does. The way the FAA works, everything is allowed until they say it isn't. The way the rest of the world works, NOTHING is allowed until they say it is. Can you imagine trying to get a FAR rewrite when you want to try something new?
Getting pretty paranoid there methinks. You've hit upon some excellent SZ topics there about people's generally anti-Freedom attitudes and cultural shift, but I fail to see how answering the question posed would have any effect on that.
You've also got the whole "everything is allowed" thing wrong. Everything is allowed until one day an inspector slaps a violation on you. If you try to call and ask if you can do something you find inconsistency, so most folks decide on their own what they think they can get away with and roll the dice.
This isn't murder. That's clearly always wrong. But when it comes to "is it OK to mount a camera on an airplane" there isn't nearly as clear of an answer. I'd much rather have the answer be given to me by an inspector with the leeway to say "It's OK as long as you only attach it via these means and don't fly over tons of people with it attached" vs. "Sorry, it sounds safe to me, but our new uniform no-camera policy won't allow it at all."
Please re-read my posts. I never claimed you won't find that type of inspector. I claimed you won't consistently get that answer. And that's inappropriate.
Please show where he gave a reasoned answer better than the equivalent of "I don't know".
No, he tried to answer the OP's question and you jumped all over him.
Nope. Tossed him a softball. If I "jumped all over him" you'd know it. There's at least 20 more where that one came from.
That's a heckuva lot more in-depth than I've seen on the subject before. It's not much, but again, the guy came here for FUN, not to get heckled.
No heckling here. Just challenged his assertion. If you say, "I work as a data analyst and numbers are not data.", someone would say, no. And then you'd explain why. Or you'd say, "Nevermind. I was wrong." Or you'd run away crying. Whatever. Your choice in how to respond is on you. Not the person on a discussion board who said, "no."
I wouldn't ask you to call all the offices of your company and ask them for answers and names either. I don't think that anyone would expect a reasonable person to do so based on the demands of someone they never met on an internet forum.
You really think I thought the guy who can't be bothered to post more than one word replies from an Asian hotel room about his former job, really was going to lift a finger to defend his assertion that nothing is ever wrong in his world? LOL. It's called a challenge to BS.
No, he decided it wasn't worth wasting his free time on someone who posted a snarky response to his attempts to give answers.
Two answers. Neither of any substance. No snark directed at him. Re-read my posts. Literally. Remove whatever false emotion you've attached to them.
Others have snarked. The snarkiest poster in the entire thread is R&W, by the way. All personally directed at me. I wasn't even talking to him.
The sky's not falling, but the quality of this message board sure is. We used to be the front porch of aviation. I'd send people here all the time. I wouldn't any more.
I gotta agree. Folks who know me very well and in person have decided to go on a witch hunt claiming I'm their community problem for discussing what someone else brought up in a thread.
You all act as if I knew my question would cause some guy who apparently really wasn't that interested in talking about what HE brought up, to run away from his own posts.
Yep. + 1 to everything Mooniac said.
All this is, is a couple of posters posting broad stroke, stereotype comments about organizations that they have no clue in how they operate. Even the comments on the military. I spent 20 yrs in the military and I assure you, there is plenty of red tape involved...even in the Marines.
I made a very clear assertion. FSDOs do not answer consistently, and there's no good reason for it. I backed it up with an example. Unless you're speaking of someone else.
The above paragraph is funny though. You claim others don't know how the organizations work, and then simultaneously state those organizations are loaded with red tape. Wasn't that part of my assertion, that the problem was one of non-efficiency and a lack of looking for efficiency? You really think anyone here doesn't know most government organizations are loaded with the stuff? Only those who've worked for one can figure this out?
Velocity173;1487577
As far as mounting a camera externally said:
You're *sure*, huh? What do you base that on?
Why not publish a document of guidelines that are "sure" enough to state.
Heck put a disclaimer on it, "We're still gathering information on this and may change our stance at any time. We'll rescind this document and place a new one ... here... with any future changes to this policy. Pilots are advised to check this location for updates."
Perhaps get it in writing?
Good luck with that.
I thought I already covered it. THERE IS NO GUIDANCE ON THIS. Alaska does have a hands off policy on the issue or at least they used to. What works for one region doesn't work for all regions.
So, based on the fact there isn't guidance or anything regulatory that leaves it up to individual FSDOs to determine if it just requires a log entry, a field approval or a whole separate STC. It's all subjective based on the type camera, type aircraft, where it's mounted, type of mount, etc. Leave it up to the judgment of individual FSDOs to determine that stuff until something regulatory comes out. If I'm a pilot and I want to mount something to the outside of the aircraft, what's so hard about calling the local FSDO and getting approval?
The only gripe we could have is how long it takes the FAA to implement that policy. As I brought up earlier, our HEMS Part 135 regulatory changes have taken years. Personally I was thinking why the heck does it take this long to implement increased safety regulations for HEMS? That's because the FAA is dealing with far more challenges than I ever realized. I've read their report and they actually had HEMS operators weighing in on the FAA recommendations. You know what? Hardly any of them could agree on anything! That's because you have operators with differing opinions on what's safe and operators with differing budgets on how to implement these changes. Because of all this resistance from HEMS operators, the FAA decided to delay the new regulations for another year. We all know that right now they're trying to please all parties by trying to pass some sort of UAV regs as well. They're being pulled left and right by people who hate drones (privacy issues) and those operators who are looking to make money on this new wave of aviation ingenuity.
So what an I getting at? These things take time. It's a large organization that's trying to evaluate all possible avenues prior to issuing any regulatory measures. We don't need some knee jerk reaction and some regulation banning any external camera mounts. In the interim, they feel its best to let FSDOs decide what best.
So let the FSDO publish what they believe today and amend it later if they learn something new. Especially if it's so region-specific, which I don't buy at all. But if it is, let the FSDO write it up.
Remember when FSDOs wrote whole books on things? I have a few of them. Regional things.
It's not rocket science. They even used to publish movies. I met a few of those inspectors. They certainly weren't shrinking violets or scared to answer questions in front of public crowds. One retired and is dead now. RIP. He was entertaining as a speaker, too. And informative. And always held open Q&A sessions at the end of the presentation. A true public servant. He also wasn't shy about putting his name on it.
Something changed. Now we have anonymous snarky guys who post eye roll smileys, and guys who think the easy questions are so tough they'd better excuse themselves.
Oh well. Guess that's what an organization and a County get when it decided culturally to let the lawyers handle everything.
You're allowed to hate the Navy though...just not the Marines.
LOL!
