Club Member Release

MARS Board of Directors

March 9, 2023

In late February, our Tripoli Prefect approached the MARS board concerning our existing waiver and the inability of the Tripoli Board/Insurance company to adequately insure our launches going forward.

Additional information was brought to our attention at that time regarding the impact of the adjacent Bed & Breakfast to our waiver and flight operations for Tripoli launches.

After BOD discussion, we decided to eliminate our Tripoli Prefecture, rather than accept new risk and/or operate under a severely curtailed Tripoli altitude limit.  The BOD felt that the greatly reduced limit would affect many of our members, and that not having a prefecture affected very few members.  As always, Current Tripoli members can still fly with the club under NAR rules.

Given the prefecture surrender and the new concerns raised, our waiver holder at that time was not willing to accept what he felt was a new level of personal risk and decided to surrender his waiver without discussing this action with the MARS BOD.

We have identified another individual that will be applying for an FAA waiver to allow our members to continue flying under an altitude limit and launch operations layout that not only meets, but conservatively exceeds the necessary safety margins as defined by the FAA requirements and NAR guidelines.

There will be changes to how we lay out the field to accommodate a slightly reduced waiver altitude limit and there will need to be advanced notice for any fliers that wish to fly higher than 6,000 feet, similar to how we currently require notices for “BFR’s”.

A more detailed policy will be communicated once we are closer to finalizing the FAA waiver application and we have reasonable assurance of what our final altitude limit will be.

As always, we are taking what steps we can, well within the regulations we are subject to, to ensure that we can offer the safest and most enjoyable flying experience to all of our club members.

Thank you for your patience during this transition, and for all you do for our club!

MaryBeth Clune              President
Todd Smith                      Vice President
Dan MacNeal                   Treasurer
Tom McCarthy                 Secretary