Experimenter is a magazine created by EAA for people who build airplanes. We will report on amateur-built aircraft as well as ultralights and other light aircraft.
Issue link: http://experimenter.epubxp.com/i/307497
2 Vol.3 No.5 / May 2014 FROM THE START EAA has worked hard to gain the freedom to fl y the kind of aircraft we want for our own personal reasons. You can call our fl ying recreational, private, sport, or whatever you want, but the bottom line is our brand of fl ying is strictly personal. EAA has succeeded greatly in helping to create rules that allow individuals to build and fl y their own aircraft, whatever that aircraft may be. Builders can use their airplanes with essen- tially no restrictions except that the fl ying must be for personal—not commercial or for hire—reasons. We have also been successful helping to keep warbirds fl ying under usually reasonable standards. Many of these airplanes were never certifi ed under any category, but by working with the FAA we have helped preserve an important part of our fl ying history. But EAA and other pilot groups have had less success in estab- lishing logical and workable regulations of standard category private airplanes fl own strictly for personal reasons—until now. Finally, with some pressure from Congress, we are starting to see the FAA consider rule changes that make sense for private aviation. A fi rst step was creation of the light-sport aircraft category several years ago. LSA can be "certifi ed" under a consensus stan- dard instead of the conventional FARs that regulate standard category airplanes. Pilots fl ying LSA can also use a driver's license as evidence of fi tness to fl y instead of an FAA issued third-class medical certifi cate. Both the new aircraft certifi cation standard of LSA and the driver's license medical have worked. There is no measurable dif erence in the safety of LSA aircraft in terms of structure and performance, and absolutely no evidence that pilots fl ying with a driver's license instead of a medical are any less safe. This success should surprise absolutely nobody. In fact, LSA and the driver's license medical procedure bring personal avia- tion closer in line with the way other activities are regulated. For example, if you drive a big Class A motor home on your own private trips there is very little regulation. If you drive a bus of similar size and charge people for the ride, the bus, the driver, and the operator all must meet signifi cant standards designed to ensure minimum safety. On the water, drivers of small launches used to carry boat owners out to their boats must have Coast Guard licenses, the launches must be inspected regularly, and the launch drivers must pass random drug tests. The launch driver is ferrying a skipper to a boat that is often many times the size of the launch, but that large-boat owner is not regulated because he uses the boat only for his own personal and private reasons. It's the same in our homes. There are some common sense rules requiring smoke detectors in most locales, and maybe a few other basics like that, but in general our private homes are not regulated. Convert that same building into a bed and break- fast, rent rooms, and serve meals, and you leap into an entirely new, and often intense, regulatory environment because your home is now a commercial operation. And that's as it should be. So what we at EAA are asking is for personal fl ying to be treated the same as other private activities. We are not of ering our airplanes for public transportation, the risks of private fl y- ing just like private boating or a private residence are our own, and we can deal with them. The congressionally mandated restructuring of the FAR Part 23 rules that govern certifi cation of airplanes weighing less than 12,500 pounds are headed in the right direction. The new rules will set goals for performance and safety and allow manufactur- ers to meet those goals in a variety of ways. New technology will be encouraged, not burdened with leaden rules. And there is at least a goal of giving standard airplane owners the ability to do much of their own maintenance and use airworthy but not nec- essarily certifi ed components. And now the FAA is formulating new medical standards that we expect will allow many to fl y for personal reasons with a driv- er's license. At this writing the new proposed rules have not been issued, and details are always important, but Congress is pressuring the FAA to act, and so are EAA, AOPA, and other aviation groups. It's way too soon to declare victory, but our combined ef orts are starting to pay of . We fl y for personal reasons, and we should be treated the same as other private activities always have been. TOWER FREQUENCY On the cover: Carl Unger prepares to give another passenger for a ride. (Photography courtesy of EAA Archives) EAA and Personal Aviation BY JACK PELTON Photography by Jason Toney E A A E X P _ M a y 1 4 . i n d d 2 EAAEXP_May14.indd 2 5 / 5 / 1 4 3 : 1 1 P M 5/5/14 3:11 PM