Originally Posted by
Lonewolf_50
Ancient-Mariner:
1991 America's Cup competition off the coast of San Diego, CA.
There was a significantly large no fly and no lower than 1000' zone that obstructed our normal VFR exit and entry routes past Point Loma.
The area was just off the coast, adjacent to and overlapping the ATA for NAS North Island.
We were told that the restrictions were to prevent our rotor wash from disturbing the boats / regatta which were owned and operated by really rich people who had prevailed upon the FAA and Naval authorities to not risk their race being influenced by rotary wing aircraft operations.
Memory is foggy on this, but I seem to recall that the lighter (Jet Ranger) news helicopters also had a restriction that was either the same as ours or maybe a little bit lower. There was a lot of news chopper activity covering the regatta.
Lonewolf - it's not just boats and rich people. For my high power rocketry, we require clear airspace above us to a significant altitude. Last weekend we had a launch in central Oregon - we had a 'standing' waiver to 25k (~20,800 AGL), with 'windows' to 40k. With large rockets readily capable of flights over 30k (and no directional control after the button is pushed), it's important to keep the airspace clear to prevent a collision between an aircraft and a rocket (based on what a bird can do, I don't want to even imagine the damage a 50 or 100 pound rocket could do in a high speed collision).
That being said, we still monitor for encroaching aircraft before launching - last weekend we had at least four small aircraft encroach on our airspace, forcing a temporary halt to operations. Apparently some pilots think NOTAM means "there is something interesting going on, let's go take a look". And lest you think it's only GA pilots that don't follow the NOTAM, a few years back it was a 747-8 headed south (presumably headed to the Boeing facility in Texas) at maybe 10k (certainly lower than our 25k waiver) - it was low enough that I could
readily identify that it was a definitely a 747-8, not a different model
