Originally Posted by JohnBurke

The person on the video ("trent") makes several falsehoods initially and starts out establishing a violation; he paints it as a perfectly innocent act that he believes is within the regulation. He was ill advised to start with, clearly doesn't/didn't understand or know the regulation, and didn't have a clue on how to handle the call from the FAA.

Step one when contacted by the FAA is to seek legal counsel. Not accept or make a recorded call. Not go to the FSDO for an informal meeting. Not submit a written statement or respond to a letter of investigation. Rule one: keep they trap shut. (to include making talking-head videos about it and posting them online).

Whereas the FAA has clearly determined in the past that three people gathered can constitute an urban area or a small cluster of buildings or homes or structures the same, attempting to conduct low passes and then land an RC field, not an airport or private landing field, especially without having inspected it previously, was a poor choice.

Mr. Palmer makes statements about precedent and case law here, stating incorrectly that this establishes future precedent. He is wrong. His enforcment action and the subsequent upholding of that enforcement action by an administrative law judge is not "case law."

There are three basic sources by which to understand the regulation and its interpretation: the first and foremost are the Federal Register preambles at such time the regulation was introduced in its final rule, explaining the purpose and intent of the regulation. The second are FAA Chief Legal Counsel Letters of Interpretation. The third, in order, is the regulation itself.

ALJ decisions regarding individual cases to not establish future precedent, nor application of the law; they are useful and of interest in seeing how the regulation was applied in the past, to a specific case (in this case, Trent Palmer's). The ALJ rendering, upholding FAA enforcement action against Mr. Palmer, does not imply or burden an aviator in a future case, and Mr. Palmer does NOT understand this. Further, he stipulates that the ALJ's upholding of his certificate suspension means that any time a pilot makes an inspection pass for a landing and doesn't land, the pilot is in violation. This is a straw man, wild stretch, and is untrue. I won't say a lie, because I don't believe that Mr. Palmer has any intent to lie; his errors and gross misunderstanding are just that: he doesn't know what he's talking about. The closest he could possibly come to being correct might be to say that a pilot attempting to land at the same location under similar circumstances, might do well to review Mr. Palmer's case. He would be wildly inaccurate to imply his case impacts an ag pilot landing at an ag strip or on a road to inspect a field (something I've done many times, in the course of employment), or one of hundreds of other cases of a pilot flying low, or attempting to land, or inspecting a potential landing site.

Had Mr. Palmer not put himself there (on paper, by admitting it and arguing in his defense), the FAA could never have upheld a case, because first they'd have had to show that it was him in the airplane, and they didn't have that until HE gave it to them. Had Mr. Palmer not attempted to land at his friend's place, this wouldn't be an issue at all, or course. HIs argument that an inspection pass is necessary prior to landing at an unknown location does hold some merit. However, that is NOT justification for landing anywhere. I could not, for example, stipulate that low passes through the Walmart parking lot were necessary, because I wanted to land in the parking lot. Unless I were having an emergency and making a forced landing, that argument would be idiotic and nearly indefensible. So, not every landing is necessary, nor is it necessary to land at every location, and this is where he runs afoul of the regulation. The ALJ asked what he was doing there is the first place; the ALJ didn't stipulate that inspection passes are unnecessary, but he did look at the totality of all elements; structures, persons, landing location, go-around when he admitted he had no way to correctly identify the landing site or landing point or "runway" centerline, etc. Not only could no one else assert that it was a proper landing site, but Mr. Palmer stated for the record (and by his described actions) that he couldn't, either.

By 13:00 into his video, his premise is so flawed that it invalidates anything further he might say on the subject.