"Olin"
comcast.net> wrote in message
news:jfmdnfRP7u_7tkLanZ2dnUVZ_u-unZ2d@comcast.com...>>
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>>
>
> I'll be that was a long and entertaining conversation. Thing is, I've seen
> a bunch of foreign military aircraft here, though they were being used
> mostly for airshows and exhibitions.
Yep. Registered in Experimental/Exhibition category. *Very* restricted
on how you can use them to make money. In fact, there are restrictions
(with a fair amount of flexibility in the FAA's interpretation of those
restrictions) on how you can use them for private use.
Since the cargo plane in question could carry a heavy load, operate from
grass fields, and get off the ground in something like 50 feet (with a light
load), I thought it would be perfect for importation, conversion to some
condition that would allow it to be registered as a normal category
civilian plane, then sell it to operators in Alaska. It's not a fast plane
(cruises around 100mph), but at the time it could be bought for about the
same price as two used (20 year old) Cessna 172's I even had a
potential investor interested, but the local FAA thought it was the best
joke they had heard in a long time.
>>> I'm not even convinced it's just the feds... as local government types
>>> don't much care for being shown up on a point of policy or law either.
>>
>> At least the FAA is honest about one basic issue. The FAA regulations
>> state quite clearly that a pilot or mechanic is 'exercising privileges
>> granted
>> by the FAA'. There is no false show of pilots and mechanics having
>> any individual rights that the feds will ignore/violate at their whim.
>>
>
> At some level, driving an airplane really ain't all that much different
> from driving a car. At many other levels, there's obviously a world of
> difference. Given that fatality rates are much higher on the ground
> (though when an aircraft falls down, death IS a good bit more likely), I
> wonder why drivers' licenses are not treated in a similar fashion.
Probably because the feds haven't created a separate agency to regulate
driver's licenses.
> You just don't get a ticket to fly for life, and some of the things that
> are expensive in a car will get your ticket pulled if you get caught
> walking TO an airplane... booze, drugs and ailments that can easily lead
> to blackouts come to mind.
>
> You can swap lanes like a gymkhana rider on a freeway and if a cop doesn't
> see you, nothing's likely to happen. Buzz just one neighborhood house and
> if your tail number gets taken down you are likely to have another kind of
> long and "entertaining" conversation, quite possibly resulting in a pulled
> ticket.
Part of that is because people rarely bother to call and report someone
for driving unsafely, and part of the reason for that is probably that they
wouldn't want someone else to call and report them for doing something
stupid while driving (same attitude occurs in aviation). Since the majority
has a driver's license, and a relatively small minority has pilot's
certificates,
odds are better than any given individual will be more likely to report a
pilot for a (relatively safe, but in violation of the separation from
structures
regulation) buzz job on their friends's house, than to report the guy who's
been watching too many movies about street racing with tricked out
import cars.
Having had jobs where I had to answer the phone at smaller airports, I
can state for a fact that people will even call and report planes for legal
actions. It doesn't matter how carefully you explain to them that what they
are seeing is legal and safe, they just*know* it's illegal and they are
going
to call the cops if it isn't stopped. At that point, all you can do is
refer
them to the FAA, and let the FAA try to explain to them that a public
airport (with a rotating beacon and runway lights that automatically come
on before dark and go off in the morning) does not close at night and that
any plane landing after dark is not necessarily a drug plane (had several
calls from that guy, and he never seemed to wonder why I was answering
the phone at a supposedly closed airport).
I was spotlighted, while do night landing training with my instructor, at
that same airport. Probably the same crackpot that was convinced any
night operations were drug related (the repeated takeoffs and landings
in that Cessna 150 must have looked like a steady stream of drug planes
dropping their loads :/ ). My instructor decided it would be safer to call
it a night, instead of risking the crackpot having a rifle.
>
>>>
>>> As for my Pakistani friend, I'm just hoping he returns to Nashville
>>> okay, because he just flew "home" for a death in his family back there,
>>> and one of his stops was the airport in Islamabad.
>>
>> Not a good part of the world to be traveling through. Hope he doesn't
>> have to deal with anything worse than waiting in line and weather delays.
>
> Nope... it's not. It rarely is, but now especially.
