I don’t recall anything in the FAA regulations against picking a landing spot.
The guided flight stuff has clearly repeated been done under the amateur
exemption and specifically approved amateur rockets…
-George
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 28, 2022, at 8:57 PM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jan 2022, Paul Breed wrote:
BTW: Unit will never be able to have the landing spot “programmed” in.I built hovering rockets with a definite target landing position...
That would be targeting and is illegal
Can you quote/reference the relevant law here? I've heard much "it must be
so", but never a specific statute.
This seems to be one of those superstitions -- a related one is "guidance
systems are illegal" -- that spread by word of mouth. Nobody seems to be
able to point to a specific law or regulation justifying it.
I conjecture that it arises from progressive exaggeration of the "I will not
launch my rocket at targets" rule found in the standard model-rocketry safety
code -- which is a *custom* of the model-rocketry community, meant to steer
ignorant or thoughtless model rocketeers away from doing stupid things that
might bring the hobby into disrepute. (The full wording, as of the latest
safety code, is "I will not launch my rocket at targets, into clouds, or near
airplanes, and will not put any flammable or explosive payload in my
rocket.") As far as I know, this has always been just cautious
self-protection of that community, not anything imposed from outside.
Henry
