UCAP Blog

As it sometimes does, Congress tries to force the FAA’s hand on a policy or regulation; these efforts have but mixed results. Sometimes the FAA has no wiggle room — other times, like in this instance, the agency staff not only wants to wiggle away, but effectively reverse Congressional Intent on residential Through-the-Fence agreements (rTTF)

From a close reading of the FAA’s notice of proposed rulemaking to revise FAA policies governing rTTFs, it appears that the FAA — or, more to the point, two FAA staffers — are intent on thwarting the intent of Congress to preserve, allow and allow expansion of residential through-the-fence arrangements between public-owned, public-use airports and the residents — largely aircraft owners and aviation supporters.

This became an issue about five years ago, in the waning months of the last administration, when two FAA staffers in the Washington DC FAA Airports office, Acting Associate Administrator for Airports Katherine Lang and Director of Compliance Randall Fiertz, decided, unilaterally and without citing any credible evidence, that hangar homes were an incompatible use of adjacent airport property.

The two, Lang and Fiertz, cited reasons for their campaign as incongruous as “hangar home owners complain about airport noise” to “hangar homes are harder to condemn” than cemeteries for future airport expansion.

Lang also stated, in written hearing testimony, that “hangar home owners had undue influence on airport boards because they testified at public meetings.”

Wow…how can that be? Actually allowing users and stakeholders a word in the operation and policies of the airport they support with their fees and taxes and fuel purchases!! Wow…who do these FAA people think they represent?

Interestingly, TTF agreements for businesses didn’t face the same hostility from these two FAA people….and that hostility apparently remains since now they’re working to thwart the will of Congress through a proposal that serves only to assure they can be barriers to current rTTF renewals, expansions, and new agreements.

Congress’ rTTF language protects airports from losing airport improvement grant monies from the FAA due to past, current, or future Residential Through The Fence agreements. The FAA’s openly hostile NPRM serves solely to ignore Congress and send the FAA down the ill-advised path these two mistakenly took five years ago.

If you’re interested in preserving airports as viable public utilities, rTTFs help — and attitudes like those represented in the FAA’s NPRM hurt.

Two suggestions: first, catch up here: and be sure you read Brent Blue’s comments…

Second, read the NPRM here …

And third, then if you agree with Dr. Blue, me and a host of others, submit your own comments to the docket and let the FAA know you expect the rule to reflect the intent of Congress and NOT the biases of two bureaucrats who couldn’t leave well enough alone — and got themselves a Congressional comeuppance.

And one last thing: Since a majority of both houses of Congress concurred with Brent Blue and others, make sure you contact your lawmakers — both in the House and the Senate…and make sure you copy the FAA Office of the Administrator…tell ‘em we sent ya…

Nothing like the loss of a friend or relative to restore long-faded memories of them and the events you shared.

That’s my fallout from learning that Neil Armstrong passed over the weekend. On one side the description of his death — from complications the developed after bypass surgery — struck home for its striking familiarity. My father suffered a heart attack, needed and received a triple bypass and spent 10 days in ICU, never to recover.

This familiarity gave me a palpable sense of what Mr. Armstrong’s family endured and their grief is shared here amid personal flashbacks to my father’s final days and a renewed sense of loss.

But my personal familiarity with Mr. Armstrong sharpens my sense of loss as one more personal than that of a fan losing a personal hero.

We met many years ago, after he left NASA and my job as a reporter in Washington, D.C. occasionally put me in proximity to the famous, the great, the heroic and the mighty.

Mr. Armstrong was all of those and none of those — at least in the way he conducted his life after Apollo 11. Friendly, engaging, but eschewing any of the ego or hero worship that afflicted others, he conducted his life with quiet purpose, never ceasing to seek equal credit for the unnamed thousands of anonymous workers, scientists and technicians who contributed to the success of Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins and Neil Armstrong.

It was a reception at the National Air & Space Museum, a fitting locale and a frequent stop on my daily travels between the FAA, the Capital and my office in N.W. D.C. Mr. Armstrong engaged in friendly conversation when we met, tolerating the embarrassed intrusion of a scribe who caught him staring at an Apollo exhibit at the museum — a scribe resisting the amateurish urge to ask for an autograph or for him to pose for a photo with the feeling-fortunate reporter.

He said something about how the moments on the Moon seemed so fleeting but had seemed to last forever in memories.

My response was something along the lines of agreement, noting how millions of us felt the same. “We were all with you that day, everyone on Earth.”

“Yes, you were…nice meeting you…” He was nice enough to call me by name as he moved on a little farther from the growing crowd. When my boss later asked if he said anything worth reporting, my feeble response was, “It wasn’t that kind of conversation.” Oh, was all he could manage.

Mr. Armstrong belongs to the ages and has for more than 40 years, forever associated with his singular “luck” as he put it, to be the human to take mankind’s first step off our home world and onto another.

You’re with us still, Mr. Armstrong, and always will be.

On Jan 18 the Uncontrolled Airspace website will go dark from 8am to 8pm as part of an internet-wide protest of the SOPA/PIPA bills which are being considered by the US Congress.

Cory Doctorow of the Boing Boing website explains the issues well.

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/14/boing-boing-will-go-dark-on-ja.html

“… I don’t think that any amount of “piracy” justifies this kind of depraved indifference to the consequences of one’s actions. Big Content haven’t just declared war on Boing Boing and Reddit and the rest of the “fun” Internet: they’ve declared war on every person who uses the net to publicize police brutality, every oppressed person in the Arab Spring who used the net to organize protests and publicize the blood spilled by their oppressors, every abused kid who used the net to reveal her father as a brutalizer of children, every gay kid who used the net to discover that life is worth living despite the torment she’s experiencing, every grassroots political campaigner who uses the net to make her community a better place — as well as the scientists who collaborate online, the rescue workers who coordinate online, the makers who trade tips online, the people with rare diseases who support each other online, and the independent creators who use the Internet to earn their livings.”

Read the whole thing here.

We urge all our US listeners to contact their elected representatives and tell them you oppose SOPA/PIPA.

If only…

Originally shared by champguy in the Forums.

“A special committee set up to steer the implementation of a critical NextGen technology has concluded there is – as yet – no business case for an equipage mandate.”

via FAA Aviation Rulemaking Committee pans ADS-B. For now….

Well, it’s 11/11/11…and at 11 there’s an event honoring veterans that’s on my to-do list. There will be lots of hats and pins and patches attesting to the different services and various conflicts the veterans faced and survived.

For my part, the moment is but one moment on one day in which the service of my father, my uncles, my neighbors and friends dominates my thoughts. Many of those remembered gave the last full measure of their efforts in conflicts far from home; many others made it home and built America’s remarkable middle class out of the GI Bill and out of their sweat and tears and blood. Some of them passed on to that great vets reunion beyond us.

Remember them all today and every day; remember when you see that homeless guy wearing old, faded olive drab or dessert camo…they probably earned those clothes the hard way and now have a hard way through life.

Those deserve our remembrances and our thanks as much as those with shiny badges and fresh, clean clothes. And the whole lot of them deserve at least a moment of our remembrances every single day we continue to enjoy loving under our flag.

To my fellow vets, a tip of the wing to you all.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

(L to R) Bob Snyder, Dave Pascoe, Doug Fortnam, Jack Hodgson, Mike Smith, Bill Mullett, John Telfeyan (and Griffin), Rick Felty.