I’m not commenting on forum rules; I think highly of honest discussions as long as they don’t devolve into something less than respectful.This entire discussion seems to have arisen out of a confusion between “should” and “can”, “dangerous” and “inconvenient”. My case is that I that I could and would impose a higher standard if I were witnessing (which I’m not), but I would only do this with what I consider good reason and not arbitrarily. If my good reason is safety or liability-related, then I should.
That stance has always been fully consistent and has not changed.
If the others can’t or won’t accept this, or disagree with me on what would constitute a very good reason…tough. Same with a flyer; lots of others would be willing to help. I’m under no obligation to come to an agreement.
I do object to being accused of breaking forum rules though. My words have been sharp but not vicious, nor is my objective to stir up trouble.
One reason Tripoli limits who can witness certification attempts is to try and promote consistency. We have clear cut rules and if we have a TAP, Director, or Prefect (official witnesses) who adds arbitrary rules that simply don’t exist, eventually that person will likely receive a call from one of the leaders in the organization explaining that they cannot simply make up their own rules. They are also required to adhere to the minimum rules or explain why they didn’t.
So, that means that an official witness isn’t allowed to require a certain number of MPR (which isn’t even an official category anymore) flights before agreeing to witness an L1 flight. Based on a rocket inspection an official witness could let a candidate know that they cannot fly an L1 flight, but they need to be able to cite actual deficiencies, such as “cardboard centering rings won’t withstand an H999”. It cannot be something as arbitrary as “you have never flown a G.”
Now maybe there is an argument for requiring that a person fly a particular impulse level before attempting L1, but if so, bring it to the people who write the certification rules; don’t just impose your version of the rules.