Kissing the waiver flights

I am looking for a discussion of how your club handles this problem.

Background: Our waiver is 15K. We have a number of what I will refer to as altitude junkies. They continually ask to kiss the waiver sometimes regardless of wind and weather. I have always gone by the 10% rule. If you are going 13,500 feet or higher, you can't fly it on our field.

We have considered making a rule that 8K or higher needs a simulation file or calculation to back up how high you will fly and preapproval.

How does your club handle these flights?

Jorge Blanco of SoAR who runs the GRITS flight every year does similar to what you suggest as there have been many altitude junkies kissing waiver. They have 18k waiver but now have a hard limit of 14k. Flights over 10k required sim. Problem they have at GRITS is rockets being recovered on private property.
My club has the 10% rule and have also been considering requiring a sim for any flight over 10k.

Tim,

timbucktoo said:

Jorge Blanco of SoAR who runs the GRITS flight every year does similar to what you suggest as there have been many altitude junkies kissing waiver. They have 18k waiver but now have a hard limit of 14k. Flights over 10k required sim. Problem they have at GRITS is rockets being recovered on private property.
My club has the 10% rule and have also been considering requiring a sim for any flight over 10k.

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What is your waiver? Which club?

I am not trying to be controlling or a jerk. We just need to protect out waiver and field. Too may flight drifting off the field.

Spaceport Rocketry. Our waiver is 15k with an advertised buffer of 13.5k. We also have a few individuals who like to kiss the waiver.

cwbullet said:

Tim,


What is your waiver? Which club?

I am not trying to be controlling or a jerk. We just need to protect out waiver and field. Too may flight drifting off the field.

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Is it the altitude or the recovery method or the weather conditions or a bit of all 3 that are contributing to drifting off the field?

At GRITS (not my club), I think it's all of the above. First time I flew there, a few people were trying to kiss the waiver. One guy did & he popped his main at the top. Rocket drifted several miles. Another probably hit 14k and he still drifted onto other property. Upper winds probably contributed in his case. Since then, the club pres has tightened the ceiling although they still have the 18k waiver.
At my club (SRA), our recovery is big enough but people still feel the need to go high and kiss the waiver, hence we advertise 13.5 k.

WSR (NAR 703) doesn't have a policy, but I will bring it up at the next meeting. Good idea on requiring a sim for anything getting close to 90% of the waiver. Our waiver is 10,000 feet.

Kissing the waiver is one issue - nothing wrong with that as long as you don't break the waiver.

Flying (recovering) outside the waiver'ed cylinder is a big no-no.
Repeat offenders should be grounded.

Sims are only as trust worthy as the flyers.

TriCities Rocketeers have the 10% rule, any flight planned to be within 10% requires pre-approval by the board and 2 sims by different sources (OR, RS, RAS Aero, etc). We also have a 10% buffer.

FredA said:

Kissing the waiver is one issue - nothing wrong with that as long as you don't break the waiver.

Flying (recovering) outside the waiver'ed cylinder is a big no-no.
Repeat offenders should be grounded.

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Fred I'm just using your post as a example , not a attack . The club should be smart enough to either change their setup layout / cancel the launch / or simply put a hard ceiling on flights . Obviously flyers cannot control the winds , but a LCO can control the flights. Now if somebody comes up with a M in a minimum diameter rocket saying it's only gonna go 10k , then yes , ground them .

In addition to lowering the advertised waiver and requiring sims, I think you could also appeal to the better judgement of the altitude junkies themselves. Sometimes it takes a reminder (however stern it needs to be based on your members) that flying fields are difficult to come by, can be lost by breaking the waiver and/or landing outside the designated area, and could result in the club shutting down entirely. Any reasonable rocketeer would NOT want to be responsible for losing their club’s field.

The unreasonable ones who would risk the club’s field for the sake of altitude shouldn’t be in the club.

In our club, if you want to fly within 10% of the nominal waiver (14K AGL), you need to convince the LD that you're not going to break it. The one time I had a flight that high, I used the argument that the previous day's flight on a lower impulse motor had gone 8% over the simulated altitude, and 8% over sim on the larger motor was 13.6K. He bought it, and it flew to 13.5K. If I were LD, I would be reluctant to take a sim only without flight data to back up whether the sim matches reality.

I believe that the actual FAA waiver is more than the 14K nominal. We were also lucky in that the recovery area was mostly BLM land and not private property.

Exactimator said:

Sometimes it takes a reminder (however stern it needs to be based on your members) that flying fields are difficult to come by, can be lost by breaking the waiver and/or landing outside the designated area, and could result in the club shutting down entirely. Any reasonable rocketeer would NOT want to be responsible for losing their club’s field.

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And this is the reason for SoAR’s limit. Too many fields have been recently lost in the southeast, at least one of which was due to rocketeers disregarding instructions at the flyers’ meeting and trampling on neighbors’ property.

We’ve (SoAR) got access to four fields right now, 2 LP and 2 HP, because of the respect we show the landowners, but we’re still fighting stereotypes caused by people in the past.

One of the high power fields is brand new (first launch on Saturday). It’s not ideal (5K limit), but it’s better than anything we can get in the metro ATL area, and it’s only an hour from my house. We hope to show other landowners that we can be good stewards. The altitude limit is below the waiver there as well. If Jorge has to ground someone for breaking the limit, or trespassing onto other fields, I’m all for it.

3stoogesrocketry said:

The club should be smart enough to either change their setup layout / cancel the launch / or simply put a hard ceiling on flights . Obviously flyers cannot control the winds , but a LCO can control the flights. Now if somebody comes up with a M in a minimum diameter rocket saying it's only gonna go 10k , then yes , ground them .

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Our club is smart.
We also have a 50k waiver and if you toss the laundry at the top, you're likely to go outside the cylinder.....
Mastery of Dual-Deploy is REQUIRED, but there is no way to enforce this - especially since we [TRA] won't even enforce good recovery on a CERT!

If you do break the waiver don’t post it on YouTube

Personally, if I was RSO and someone walked up saying "I'm going to 'kiss the waiver'", I would seriously be inclined to say "No you are not" and them make them prove to me six way to Sunday that they wont before they fly.

If you come close to the waiver by accident due to site conditions or incorrect sims or motor variations, I can forgive that. Since even a 100% nominal flight has some amount of variation, you should never plan to use 100% of the waiver. I'm of the belief that we should treat each other with respect and as adults. If the waiver is 15k AGL, then report it as 15k AGL and expect people to not exceed 13.5k AGL without asking special permission. If you have someone that doesn't respect the waiver or is blatantly walking right up to it, then you should have a talk with that flier. If they can't act like an adult and respect the waiver then they shouldn't be flying there.

Kissing the waiver == flirtation with a FAR 101 violation. Why allow it? Can they guarantee they won’t exceed the upper limit?
It’s like their asking you to put up money to cover their trip to Vegas. They risk little; you stand only to lose.

I advertise less waiver than I activate. I feel more comfortable with a slight buffer.
Ours is a small club and so I’m able to poll the high flyers before I activate the waiver.
I also no longer trust other people’s sims. Especially for research motors that haven’t been static fired.

I believe ours (LUNAR) does the 10% thing. There's a High Power Coordinator that checks out anything in the L and above impulse category, and gives those flights extra scrutiny prior to flight. There's usually only one or two flights per launch that clear 7-8k. Waiver is 15k. Highest I've seen there in 4 years is 12,430 on a flight simulated to 13500. There were two (that I can remember) other flights not successfully recovered with altimeter readings that were predicted to fly ~13000'.

Rules of rocketry:
1 - don't bust the waiver
2 - don't piss off the landowner
3 - follow the other rules.....

Steve Shannon said:

I also no longer trust other people’s sims. Especially for research motors that haven’t been static fired.

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A rather concerning, blanket statement from our pres.....

I've never had this come up but IF a rocket lands in someone else's field does the flyer attempt to contact the landowner or give it up to the cows? I have my name and number on all of my rockets and chutes just in case, hoping someone would contact me if found. Is that probable or sound?

John Taylor said:

I've never had this come up but IF a rocket lands in someone else's field does the flyer attempt to contact the landowner or give it up to the cows? I have my name and number on all of my rockets and chutes just in case, hoping someone would contact me if found. Is that probable or sound?

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Arrangements to recover from neighboring landowners property should be made in advance, usually by the launch organizer. In the absence of such, get permission before trespassing. That’s probably of the most frequently cited reasons fields are lost.

Nothing wrong with waivering X, advertising X-10%, and requiring sims above x-20% or even x-50%.

50,000 / 45,000 / 40,000 / 25,000
10,000 / 9,000 / 8,000 / 5,000

If somebody ends up at 126% of their sim and noticibly breaks the waiver, maybe they're grounded.

FredA said:

A rather concerning, blanket statement from our pres.....

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I'd look mighty sideways at a spreadsheet motor in a CAD rocket myself.

- Have you flown with us before?
- Have you flown this bird?
- Have you flown this load?

jrkennedy2 said:

Is it the altitude or the recovery method or the weather conditions or a bit of all 3 that are contributing to drifting off the field?

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Yes and a significant amount of arrogance.

Steve Shannon said:

Kissing the waiver == flirtation with a FAR 101 violation. Why allow it? Can they guarantee they won’t exceed the upper limit?
It’s like their asking you to put up money to cover their trip to Vegas. They risk little; you stand only to lose.

I advertise less waiver than I activate. I feel more comfortable with a slight buffer.
Ours is a small club and so I’m able to poll the high flyers before I activate the waiver.
I also no longer trust other people’s sims. Especially for research motors that haven’t been static fired.

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When you are right, you are right. I am going to tighten our rules this weekend.

cwbullet said:

We just need to protect out waiver and field. Too may flight drifting off the field.

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One of the NAR reports had an example from a club in Houston with altitude limits based on wind speed and direction. Makes a lot of sense if you’re trying to avoid landing in unfriendly territory.



https://www.nar.org/pdf/launchsafe.pdf

That makes my head hurt.

M