The passion of this great hobby shines through at Joe Nall Week
Rich Hanson
richh@modelaircraft.org
As I write this month’s column, I’ve just returned from AMA’s General Membership Meeting held each year during Joe Nall Week. The meeting was held on the apron of the main hangar at the privately owned Triple Tree Aerodrome in Woodruff, South Carolina, where thousands of aeromodeling enthusiasts gather each year to share in the enjoyment and camaraderie engendered by this great hobby.
Held annually since 1983 and renamed in 1990, Joe Nall Week is arguably the largest model aircraft fly-in in the US, and perhaps in the world. The 2017 event was again hosted by Triple Tree owner Pat Hartness and the Hartness family in honor of Pat’s college classmate and lifelong friend, Joe Nall.
Pat and Joe met while attending Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. They shared a common interest in aviation and a love for RC model aircraft. Pat and Joe maintained their friendship throughout the years and continued to share their love of aviation. Joe became a qualified, instrument-rated full-scale pilot and a certified ground school instructor, teaching student pilots at the Johnston County Airport near Smithfield, North Carolina.
In 1986, with the help of the U.S. Representative from North Carolina, Martin Lancaster, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, and Pat, Joe was appointed as a board member of the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, D.C., by President Ronald Reagan. Joe died in an aircraft accident while on official business in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1989.
From 1982 until his death, Joe served as emcee of the Giant Scale Fly-In held at Hartness Field, using his aviation and modeling experience, as well as his sense of humor, to entertain audiences. After Joe’s death, Pat honored his friend’s memory by renaming the event the Joe Nall Fly-In.
U.S. Court of Appeals Strikes Down FAA’s Interim Rule on sUAS Registration
On Friday, May 19, 2017, in a case brought forward by John Taylor, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Court ruled that the FAA’s Interim Final Rule requiring the registration of recreational small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) violates Section 336 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which prohibits the FAA from promulgating “any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft.” The court ruled that the Registration Rule is in fact a rule regarding model aircraft and therefore unlawful. The court vacated the Registration Rule to the extent that it applies to model aircraft.
The court ruling was effective immediately. As such, if you have not registered your aircraft with the FAA, you are no longer required by law to do so. For those of you who have already registered, you might be wondering what this means for you. As of this writing, we are awaiting word from the FAA and will share more information as it becomes available.
AMA leadership has repeatedly argued that federal registration for our community is duplicative, and the AMA has always held that hobbyists complying with and participating in a community-based safety program should be free from unnecessary government oversight. This is why we’ve worked vigorously with Congress and continue to fight to protect the aeromodeling community from burdensome regulation.
It was through AMA’s efforts that the Special Rule for Model Aircraft was put into law in the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which was the basis for the challenge to FAA’s Interim Rule on registration and allowed John Taylor to win his suit. We will continue to focus our time and resources on protecting the Special Rule and fighting the primary threat to our hobby with a lawsuit against the FAA’s 2014 Interpretive Rule.
The court’s ruling on sUAS registration bodes well for our pending challenge to FAA’s Interpretive Rule in which the agency published its interpretation of the Special Rule for Model Aircraft. Through its interpretation, the FAA established new rules and restrictions for the use of model aircraft, which we’ve argued are in violation of Section 336.
Our petition, filed in August 2014, is currently before the same court that has now rejected the FAA’s registration rule and affirmed the strength of the Special Rule for Model Aircraft. This gives us hope for our continued fight against the Interpretive Rule.
AMA is nearly three years into its challenge to the Interpretive Rule, and the next FAA reauthorization bill is now working its way through Congress, which could have new implications for the aeromodeling community.
We appreciate you sticking with us through these complicated, yet monumentally important, issues and we ask that you remain engaged and informed. We might need your help by once again making your wishes and concerns known to your elected representatives.
