{"id":3830,"date":"2018-10-02T16:28:11","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T20:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/?p=3830"},"modified":"2018-10-04T09:00:07","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T13:00:07","slug":"how-the-new-bill-could-affect-our-hobby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/2018\/10\/02\/how-the-new-bill-could-affect-our-hobby\/","title":{"rendered":"How the New Bill Could Affect Our Hobby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 was passed by Congress and expected to be signed by the President soon. Once this legislation is enacted into law, there will be a transition period which means we will still operate under elements of Section 336, but we&#8217;re not sure of the timeline.\u00a0 Please continue to follow AMA for updates as the regulations affect our hobby.<\/p>\n<p>While some of the changes are positive, and include provisions that AMA has championed, other changes AMA does not support.\u00a0 We will continue to\u00a0 advocate for a resolution that does not harm our hobby.\u00a0 Thank you to the AMA members who wrote Congress, which opened doors for AMA to petition for changes.<\/p>\n<p>The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 includes the following positive provisions and improvements:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The five-mile airport notification rings are removed, which was a burdensome and often misinterpreted mandate.<\/li>\n<li>Congress more clearly defines community-based organizations (CBOs) and tasks the FAA to recognize CBOs.<\/li>\n<li>CBOs, like AMA, are given a more prominent role in shaping future regulations.<\/li>\n<li>Congress codifies elements of AMA&#8217;s safety programming into law, including the use of first person view.<\/li>\n<li>There are no prescriptive Remote ID equipage mandates, which allows AMA to work with the FAA and others in Washington on a reasonable approach and threshold for this potential requirement.<\/li>\n<li>Congress allocated $1 million every year to help support education campaigns such as Know Before You Fly, which AMA co-founded.<\/li>\n<li>Congress recognizes the distinction between members of a CBO, like AMA, and those &#8220;outside the membership, guidelines, and programming&#8221; of a CBO. Congress tasks the FAA to consider different operating parameters for this non-CBO community.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At the same time, the legislation includes several problematic provisions. These issues must be addressed through legislation or regulatory changes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The bill does not stop irresponsible drone operators \u2013 it only harms our safe and long-standing model aviation community, which has posed no new risk.<\/li>\n<li>The bill removes the model aircraft definition and instead adopts a one-size-fits-all approach to regulation that lumps all hobbyists, toys, and the recreational community into one category \u2013 everything is simply unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).<\/li>\n<li>With no justification, AMA members can no longer fly over 400 feet in class G (rural airspace).<\/li>\n<li>This will harm or kill our sailplane, turbine, aerobatic, and large model aircraft communities, which accounts for over 30% of our operations.<\/li>\n<li>The 400-foot altitude cap also excludes AMA and the USA from participating or hosting many world aeromodeling events sanctioned by the FAI through the AMA and NAA.<\/li>\n<li>This bill curtails events and harms charities, stifling youth involvement in STEM education. All of AMA\u2019s language to protect middle school and high school STEM aeromodeling use need reinserted.<\/li>\n<li>The legislation includes testing mandates, which raises many concerns. Federal and state regulations could hinder youth from participating in the testing requirement therefore denying them enjoyment of our hobby.<\/li>\n<li>The bill opens the door to restrict our operations to flying sites.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 was passed by Congress and expected to be signed by the President soon. Once this legislation is enacted into law, there will be a transition period which means we will still operate under elements of Section 336, but we&#8217;re not sure of the timeline.\u00a0 [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-congress","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3830"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3839,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3830\/revisions\/3839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amablog.modelaircraft.org\/amagov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}