Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Legal Concerns

I have been asked if this is legal. It is legal... enough. FAA Part 101 regulations stipulate what can and cannot go up unmanned and what you are required to do before during and after flight.
We decided to have a very small payload (less than 1/4 the smallest size mentioned in the FAA regulations) and just launch it guerrilla style.
If you are still unsure, homeboy here did the time to research this and write up his findings.

2 comments:

  1. To the 'homeboy' technical guy: I'm really glad to see you were able to put a lot of your engineering skills from different disciplines to good use in one project.

    One thing I noted in your writeup under "Miscellaneous" is that Li-Ion batteries work well at low temperatures. I guess 'low' is relative, but compared to other batteries this is not true. Li-Ion batteries not only lose the majority of their capacity at a relatively high temperature (~freezing lets say), but their ability to supply surge current diminishes as well (with the advent of 'supercaps' this is less of a problem, as long as you account for it). From my experience these batteries are preferred in many military applications due to their capacity to weight ratio despite their poor performance at low temperatures.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Drew, thats good to know. The "homeboy" guy was someone else who did a similar project a few years ago near Stanford. I doubt he'll end up reading this blog, but we can use this information to our advantage.

    ReplyDelete