Should I NASA this

well, keep in mind nasa forms only grant you "immunity" every so often. Not like you can bust a reg, file a NASA form, and then do another one the very next week.

Mistakes happen, but unless ATC called you out on it, i wouldnt concern myself with it. IIRC Theres a 300ft error between altimeters and xpnders. And 100ft falls well within that. If this is the kind of thing that keeps you up at night, then RELAX.
 
Thanks for all the replies! I have never done a NASA report, so I was unsure about it, so thank you for all the questions answered. I did just file one. Now no sleep with be lost tonight haha.
 
clestudentpilot said:
Haha, it would be nice if we had a definition to congested areas. I was not over the "congested area of a city, town, or settlement." While there were houses below me, it was not even close to the "congested are of the city"
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Congested areas have been determined to be much smaller than most people realize. Examples:


  1. over a small congested area consisting of approximately 10 houses and a school
  2. over campus of a university
  3. over a beach area along a highway, and
  4. over a boy's camp
You played it safe by filing the report. But I will add that flying within a 100' block of airspace while maneuvering to take pictures isn't a good judgment call. Even private pilots get a 200 foot window for ground reference maneuvers.
 
minitour said:
Without even reading the OP, yes.

Fill one out and send it in. Maybe they can gather data from your flight and figure out something that's wrong to improve safety. Maybe it's a common error. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Just fill one out. Do it online even! That's how I do all of mine. Hopefully they're using those to improve safety for everyone. So, with that in mind, any time you think "should I?" the answer is "yes".

-mini
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XcalibeR said:
What mini said. There's no reason not to. I send them in all the time, it takes less than 5 minutes to do online. You ask if it could come back to bite you (the quick answer is no), but it certainly couldn't be any worse than admitting you broke a reg on a public forum :)
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I'm in agreement. Even when you aren't doing anything wrong they are a resource to improve airspace and other aviation things.

They are confidential - if you fill out the paper form, they send back the part which has your name on it, with a reference number in case anything needs to be addressed in the future; making it completely confidential with no trace back to you as the person filling out the form.

I once even got a nice little note from the form processor saying thanks for filling this out.
 
MidlifeFlyer said:
The filing of a NASA form, unless you violate the confidentiality yourself by not following the instructions, can't come back to bite you in the rear.

The quasi-immunity should be a secondary consideration. The purpose of the program is to collect and disbures safety information. IMO, if, as you say, you "just learn from my mistakes" and you think that this is the type of mistake others might make with more severe consequences, you have a moral obligation to the pilot community to report the event.
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Yeah that. Well said. I have filled a out few.
 
[True Story]A buddy of mine was doing a photo shoot over a jail. The photographer boss was suppose to call the jail and let them know what was going on and get permission. He never did. A guard at the jail got t' off that my buddy was flying so low and kept circling over the jail that he scoped in w/ his rifle or binocs and got his tail number. Even though the jail was out in the middle of no where the FAA's decided that the jail fell into the category of any other area deem fit by the FAA. They told him he was being investigated and were pulling ATC records of the incident. Luckily he never dipped below 1,000 AGL and the investigation was dropped otherwise he probably would have been hosed.[/True Story]

Moral of the story...cover your ass and just file the report.
 
jhugz said:
[True Story]A buddy of mine was doing a photo shoot over a jail. The photographer boss was suppose to call the jail and let them know what was going on and get permission. He never did. A guard at the jail got t' off that my buddy was flying so low and kept circling over the jail that he scoped in w/ his rifle or binocs and got his tail number. Even though the jail was out in the middle of no where the FAA's decided that the jail fell into the category of any other area deem fit by the FAA. They told him he was being investigated and were pulling ATC records of the incident. Luckily he never dipped below 1,000 AGL and the investigation was dropped otherwise he probably would have been hosed.[/True Story]

Moral of the story...cover your ass and just file the report.
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G. Jordan? (photographer, not the pilot)
 
MidlifeFlyer said:
The filing of a NASA form, unless you violate the confidentiality yourself by not following the instructions, can't come back to bite you in the rear.

The quasi-immunity should be a secondary consideration. The purpose of the program is to collect and disbures safety information. IMO, if, as you say, you "just learn from my mistakes" and you think that this is the type of mistake others might make with more severe consequences, you have a moral obligation to the pilot community to report the event.
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:yeahthat:

Reasons to fill out the form: It adds data for analysis that makes the system safer for everyone.

Reasons not to fill out the form: It takes five minutes of your time.

Reasons to ask people on the Internet if you should fill out the form: ?
 
The reason why I posted this on here was simply to get input. I have never filled out a NASA form before, and wanted to make sure this would be a correct instance to do one. I got my answer,which is what I thought, but having never done one, I had little to base my opinion on. I guess it was also hard for me to admit to the FAA (ok NASA first, then the FAA), that I may have unintentially, and potentially, violated an regulation. As I said before, I may have not violated a reg anyway, I may have only needed 500' AGL anyway, but I wanted 1000' AGL to play it safe. As pilots, we all strive to be perfect. While we all (well most of us) recognize that we will never be perfect, we all strive for perfection. It was a tough pill for me to swollow to admit to the people who issued my certificate, that I may have inadvertantly broken one of their regulations.

Did I make a unwise decision, yes. When I had trouble get a Class B clearance, should I have queried further, yes. If I still couldn 't get one, should I have scrapped the idea of do the photos and video, yes. Lesson learned, and hopefully this will only make me a better pilot.
 
clestudentpilot said:
Did I make a unwise decision, yes. When I had trouble get a Class B clearance, should I have queried further, yes. If I still couldn 't get one, should I have scrapped the idea of do the photos and video, yes. Lesson learned, and hopefully this will only make me a better pilot.
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Welcome to the internet, where half a dozen people will Monday-morning-quarterback you to death no matter what you do ;)

Keep posting your questions and stories. Even if you catch some flak for it, there are a lot of lurkers who read these forums and learn from them, even if they never speak up. Threads like this probably help those people as much, if not more, than it helped you.

At least that's what I keep telling myself when I post my stupid pilot tricks for all the internet to see :D
 
jrh said:
Welcome to the internet, where half a dozen people will Monday-morning-quarterback you to death no matter what you do ;)........

.........At least that's what I keep telling myself when I post my stupid pilot tricks for all the internet to see :D
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I wish to criticize your stupid pilot tricks. I think I have better techniques for making them happen.....:D
 
jrh said:
Welcome to the internet, where half a dozen people will Monday-morning-quarterback you to death no matter what you do ;)

Keep posting your questions and stories. Even if you catch some flak for it, there are a lot of lurkers who read these forums and learn from them, even if they never speak up. Threads like this probably help those people as much, if not more, than it helped you.

At least that's what I keep telling myself when I post my stupid pilot tricks for all the internet to see :D
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Good post
 
NASA ASRS forms are truly misunderstood by a huge number of pilots for a variety of reasons - from how they work, right down to the reason why they even exist in the first place. I'm beginning to think that some pilots really believe that they exist solely to help them avoid getting violated if they accidentally break a regulation. And I frequently encounter discussions about filing an ASRS report that seem to be predicated on whether or not the pilot thinks he'll be "caught" violating a regulation. Obviously, that's not the intent of the reporting system. The reports should be filed whenever you believe safety has been compromised, not out of fear that you might get punished for violating regs.

Remember, it's the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The key is that NASA wants to gather as much information as possible about safety issues in aviation in order to help improve and/or educate the public about those issues. Since safety concerns can sometimes involve an inadvertent regulation violation, NASA had the wisdom to include both confidentiality and a degree of immunity to help encourage pilots to participate in their data collection efforts.

No, you can not trigger an investigation or violation by filing a NASA report. And as MidlifeFlyer mentioned, the immunity incentive should be an afterthought. Few pilots understand that if the FAA happens to investigate a violation, and it turns out that you filed an ASRS report concerning that violation, you don't have to serve the suspension that may result, but the violation still appears on your pilot record. In other words, if you are asked if you've ever had a violation, the answer is "yes" despite the immunity from the suspension provided by the NASA form.

clestudentpilot said:
Yes, I did go by the elevation of the closest airport. I'll be honest, I don't think filing one will help safety or other pilots in any way. I should have tried harder to get a Class B clearance, and when I could, just scrapped the video shoot for the guy, and tried it another time. I am kind of upset with myself that I didn't do that, but there is nothing I can do about that now, other than learn from my mistake. If there was any true mistake here, it was a lapse in judgement on my part. I understand what you are saying about the errors involved, not to mention, as I said above, this was not the congested area of the city I was flying over (by city, I just mean the borders of the city). It was right on the edge of a yellow area on a sectional, but it isn't "the congested area of a city" so reading the exact wording of 91.119, I would say I actually only needed to be 500' AGL. The city I was over has a huge mall with houses surrounding this mall, and I would call that the "congested area of a city" and straight line distance, I was close to 2 miles from this mall.

I guess I just wanted advise, and this place is great for that. I was tagged up on radar during the video, because I was talking to approach. Like I said, safety was in no way compromised. The only thing compromised was my judgement haha. Due to that, I don't think a NASA form would do anything, other than immunity for me, but at the same time, as you said, I may have actually been 1000'AGL due to errors, and the fact that I don't know the exact elevation there, plus the fact, by the wording of 91.119, I think I actually only had to be 500' AGL anyway.
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Clestudentpilot, kudos for chosing to file the report, and it sounds like you did a lot of thinking about the situation and definitely learned something. That's part of purpose of the ASRS forms too...it forces the person making the report to think a little more in depth about the situation and likely learn more.

That said, make no mistake, pilots can definitely benefit from your report in this situation. Everyone has been focusing on the potential (and questionable) regulation violation presented by your scenario. But I would point out that your admitted "lapse of judgement" is the real threat to safety that needs to be reported on the NASA form....that is the stuff that other pilots accessing the NASA database can really learn from, not splitting hairs over whether a regulation was violated or not.
 
lhornaday said:
Congested areas have been determined to be much smaller than most people realize. Examples:


  1. over a small congested area consisting of approximately 10 houses and a school
  2. over campus of a university
  3. over a beach area along a highway, and
  4. over a boy's camp
You played it safe by filing the report. But I will add that flying within a 100' block of airspace while maneuvering to take pictures isn't a good judgment call. Even private pilots get a 200 foot window for ground reference maneuvers.
Click to expand...
So I can lower than 1000' over a girls camp?
 
FYI, in the DFW Bravo area, you can fax them a map ahead of time with your targets clearly marked, and they are pretty good about giving you a clearance through it. You might want to look into that for the future.
 
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