Yet-to-be-developed Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules stemming from the recent passage in Congress of H.R. 636, the FAA Reauthorization Act, could pose additional marking requirements for a small number of Amateur Radio towers. The bill instructs the FAA to enact rules similar to state-level statutes now in place that are aimed at improving aircraft safety in the vicinity of meteorological evaluation towers (METs) set up in rural areas. In the wake of fatal crop dusting aircraft collisions with METs, often erected on short notice, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended in 2013 that states enact laws — sometimes called “crop duster” statutes — requiring marking and registration of METs. While some state crop duster laws exempt ham radio towers, the federal legislation does not. ARRL General Counsel Chris Imlay, W3KD, said, however, that the list of exemptions in the federal legislation restricts application of the new rules to a very small subset of Amateur Radio towers.
“The FAA Reauthorization Act has very little application to Amateur Radio antennas. We will have a good opportunity to address the final FAA rules through the normal rulemaking process,” Imlay said. “We’ll be meeting soon with FAA officials to learn their intentions as well as to advance our own concerns to the agency. Uniform federal regulation is beneficial to hams, because it eliminates a patchwork of state statutes that can impose significant constraints on ham antennas in rural and agricultural areas.”
The FAA Reauthorization Act gives the FAA 1 year to issue regulations requiring the marking of towers covered by the new legislation. Marking of towers covered by the legislation will be in the form of painting and lighting in accordance with current FAA guidelines.
The law covers towers that are “self-standing or supported by guy wires and ground anchors;” are 10 feet or less in diameter at the above-ground base, excluding concrete footings; are between 50 feet above ground level at the highest point and not more than 200 feet above ground level; have accessory facilities on which an antenna, sensor, camera, meteorological instrument, or other equipment is mounted, and are located outside the boundaries of an incorporated city or town or on land that is undeveloped or used for agricultural purposes.
Imlay said the law excludes towers erected adjacent to a house, barn, electric utility station, or other building, or within the curtilage (enclosed area occupied by a dwelling, grounds, and outbuildings) of a farmstead, among other exclusions. He said “undeveloped” land refers to a defined geographical area where the FAA determines that low-flying aircraft routinely operate, such as forested areas with predominant tree cover below 200 fee, and pasture and range land.
The FAA will develop a database containing the location and height of each covered tower, but Imlay noted that the database contents may only be disclosed for purposes involving aviation safety.
“We do not anticipate that a significant number of Amateur Radio antennas will be subject to these rules,” Imlay said, “but we need to monitor the FAA rulemaking process carefully to head off requirements that could put the cost of installing and maintaining affected structures out of any reasonable reach.”
Source: ARRL
Often on the HF bands, we find that the quoted antenna frequency bandwidth is not wide enough to cover the whole band. This can be a particular proble... Read more
ARRL and the Radio Society of Great Britain will jointly sponsor events to celebrate the achievement of transatlantic communications by radio amateurs... Read more
Dave has recently been sent a handheld radio from Radioddity. Let the unboxing begin! 10W/5W/2.5W/1W Selectable: The Radioddity GD-AT10G is a pow... Read more
In this video we take a look at a new and upcoming SDR Application called SDR ++ Wide hardware support (both through SoapySDR and dedicated modules) S... Read more
Space Weather News 09.22.2021 Read more
The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Region 1 Monitoring System (IARUMS) August newsletter reports that Radio France International was active... Read more
Robert, KG5BJF, is getting ready to set up his station and his question is “How do you determine which lightning arresters are the correct ones... Read more
The FALCON OUT-250B is a Short Wave Multiband Vertical antenna (WARC incl.) with flat SWR across the bands. In this video I assemble, install, test, c... Read more
Special guest Dr. Scott McIntosh explains why sunspot cycle 25 will be big Read more
The Chameleon Tactical Delta Loop covers 80 meters through 6 meters. and will handle 100 watts on SSB and 50 watts CW/Digital. Its a great portable an... Read more
More
Stretching Antenna Bandwidths
ARRL, RSGB Announce Joint Events to Celebrate Centenary of Ham Radio Transatlantic Success
Unboxing the Radioddity GD-AT10G
SDR++ THE BLOAT FREE SDR SOFTWARE
Bright Regions Emerge Too Fast To Count | Space Weather News 09.22.2021
IARU Region 1 Monitoring System Says Radio France International Splatter “Untenable”
Choosing Lightning Arresters
HF Multiband Vertical Antenna – FALCON OUT-250B
Why Sunspot Cycle 25 Might Be a Big One –The Latest Research for Ham Radio Operators
Chameleon Tactical Delta Loop – Antenna Review
Warning: file_get_contents(https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/fastbutton?url=https%3A%2F%2Fqrznow.com%2Ffuture-faa-rules-could-affect-some-amateur-radio-antenna-support-structures%2F): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found in /home/qrznow/public_html/wp-content/themes/goodnews5/framework/functions/posts_share.php on line 151
![Fldigi v3.23.21 now available [ Free Download ]](https://qrznow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/fldigi_Main_Pic-265x168.png)
