Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:50 pm
#1780056
Hi All,
Hopefully not a stupid question, but could someone more knowledgeable than me give me a quick 101 on how the US differs from an aviation regulation (or more general legal) perspective to enable the sort of wild, amazing, bush flying that seems to be all over YouTube at the moment.
It might be easier to rephrase as a comment rather than a question - I'm asking purely out of jealousy:
Recently, I've really gotten into watching videos of STOL aircraft on Instagram, or YouTube, and the idea of just taking off and putting it down somewhere remote looks amazing. Many of the STOL videos show them landing on gravel bars in a river bed, or buzzing along a river at 100 feet, or even (as below) flying to some hot springs and then popping it down on a gravel road and parking with a bunch of tourists' cars.
For example, this was something I watched yesterday:
Now, I'm guessing (but have no idea) that the US must have some sort of equivalent rules to the 500 foot and land clear rules, but what's specifically different about the US that enables pilots to have such freedom as this?
Is it that they DON'T have a 500 feet rule? Is it that, unlike the UK, vast swathes of the country are 'unowned', so you can land many places without a landowner objecting? Is it broader than that - constitutional freedoms to go wherever you want, etc.
I can't help but watch these videos and lament that - for all of the USA's faults - it looks like an absolutely amazing country to be a pilot. If I had a kitfox or cub or similar I can just imagine how amazing it must be to live somewhere rural where flying is a really loose exercise of freedom, rather than quite a regulated way of getting from A to B.
And final question, is my biased perspective on this just because I live in the South-East? If I lived up in the Scottish Highlands, does this sort of flying take place everywhere? Can I just plonk it down on the shore of a remote loch without someone grassing me up to the powers that be?
Hopefully not a stupid question, but could someone more knowledgeable than me give me a quick 101 on how the US differs from an aviation regulation (or more general legal) perspective to enable the sort of wild, amazing, bush flying that seems to be all over YouTube at the moment.
It might be easier to rephrase as a comment rather than a question - I'm asking purely out of jealousy:
Recently, I've really gotten into watching videos of STOL aircraft on Instagram, or YouTube, and the idea of just taking off and putting it down somewhere remote looks amazing. Many of the STOL videos show them landing on gravel bars in a river bed, or buzzing along a river at 100 feet, or even (as below) flying to some hot springs and then popping it down on a gravel road and parking with a bunch of tourists' cars.
For example, this was something I watched yesterday:
Now, I'm guessing (but have no idea) that the US must have some sort of equivalent rules to the 500 foot and land clear rules, but what's specifically different about the US that enables pilots to have such freedom as this?
Is it that they DON'T have a 500 feet rule? Is it that, unlike the UK, vast swathes of the country are 'unowned', so you can land many places without a landowner objecting? Is it broader than that - constitutional freedoms to go wherever you want, etc.
I can't help but watch these videos and lament that - for all of the USA's faults - it looks like an absolutely amazing country to be a pilot. If I had a kitfox or cub or similar I can just imagine how amazing it must be to live somewhere rural where flying is a really loose exercise of freedom, rather than quite a regulated way of getting from A to B.
And final question, is my biased perspective on this just because I live in the South-East? If I lived up in the Scottish Highlands, does this sort of flying take place everywhere? Can I just plonk it down on the shore of a remote loch without someone grassing me up to the powers that be?