According to the regs, noone without a LEUP can have motors with more than
62.5g of propellant. According to the regs, motors can only be sold out of
the vendor's place of business, but can be delivered to a launch site, etc.,
if the transaction was completed at the place of business.
Vendors need to track who gets what, just as you would be required to track
what you get. You can call them JBGT's but the regs are all written.
You are asking for a list of vendors who sell motors illegally. If anyone
replies with names, you'll be reading about those vendors in the Washington
Post in a month or two.
My two cents.
Tom K
The 62.5g threshold has never made it into the regs, has it? It went
out for comment but so far is still pending.
Wasn't part of the Judge's ruling that fully assembled motors are PADs
and thus exempt from storage and licensing requirements? IIRC the BATFE
said they planned to "fix" that through the rulemaking process but so
far have not.
Thomas Koszuta wrote:
Alex,
You'r right. 62.5g never was in the published regs. According to the
published regs, ALL APCP motors are Low Explosives. The only place I've
seen 62.5g published (I have not searched that extensively) is in the
"Rocketry FAQ" on the BATFE website. 62.5g is cited as a policy.
--
Tom Koszuta
Western New York Sailplane and Electric Flyers
Not quite. As near as I can tell, he simply stated that ATF's
proclamation that the PAD exemption as stated in the 1994 letter was not
properly altered by notice and comment. It doesn't really matter as the
language of that letter is really quite limited:
"The Court finds that the variance between the pronouncements in the
ATF's April 20, 1994 and December 22, 2000 letters, with respect to the
applicability of the PAD exemption to sport model rockets, squarely fits
into the scenario discussed by the District of Columbia Circuit in
Alaska Professional. Here too, an agency sought to reverse the
applicability of an exemption without notice and comment. Thus, before
the ATF could altered its earlier interpretation of the applicability of
the PAD exemption, it was required to undertake notice-and-comment
rulemaking as required by the APA and the OCCA. Because the ATF failed
to do so, the Court concludes that its December 22, 2000 pronouncement
regarding the applicability of the PAD exemption to sport model rockets
was not in compliance with the OCCA and the APA."
Excerpt from the 1994 letter:
"The Aerotech products which have been classified by the Department of
Transportation as a flammable solid 4.1 or as explosives 1.4c, which are
within the 62.5 grams limit contained in NFPA 1122 and conform to the
requirements of model rocket motors set forth in 16 CFR section
1500.85(a)(8)(ii), would meet ATF requirements for exemption under 27
CFR part 55, section 141(a)(8)."
16 CFR 1500.85(a0(8)(ii) Contain no more than 62.5 grams (2.2 ounces) of
propellant material and produce less than 80 newton-seconds (17.92 pound
seconds) of total impulse with thrust duration not less than 0.050 second.
A Texas dealer claims that his local ATF agents have stated that he can
conduct business at the field. Which is par for the course with the ATF.
One person tells you one thing, another tells you something else.
In any case, I see nothing in 18 USC Chapter 40 that limits transactions
to the "place of business".
What the law does say is:
-------------------------------------------------
843. Licenses and user permits
...
(b) Upon the filing of a proper application and payment of the
prescribed fee, and subject to the provisions of this chapter and other
applicable laws, the Attorney General shall issue to such applicant the
appropriate license or permit if—
...
(3) the applicant has in a State premises from which he conducts or
intends to conduct business;
-------------------------------------------------
This doesn't look to me like it limits you to conducting "business" from
just the one location. For that matter I, as an applicant, must have
said premises even for a user permit. Can I only purchase regulated
materials at _my_ premises?
The ATF might have issued a ruling to this effect but if they did I
can't find it and neither can some of their field agents.
The explosives laws and regulations strike me as being poorly written.
With redundancies, ambiguities, and other problems that could keep
lawyers employed for a lifetime. Perhaps that was the real purpose. :-)
The regs also have nothing on this mythical 62.5 gram limit. There is
something in NPRM 968 but it isn't final yet and therefore
unenforceable. The ATF keeps saying they will publish the final rule but
they haven't yet. In the April combined federal agenda they claimed it
would be published in May. (This year!) There is also some question as
to the authority of the ATF to issue such an exemption.
The ATF regulations (and federal law) actually have _no_ exemption for
any rocket motor. Unless you look to the PAD letter. Which the ATF has
argued was "inartfully drafted" and not what they really meant.
--
David W. Schultz
http://home.earthlink.net/~david.schultz /
Yes but didn't the NAR/TRA legal team go back for clarification? From
the Joint Message of April 24, 2004
"On April 22, 2004, Judge Reggie Walton agreed with NAR/TRA's
interpretation of his recent order our court case. Judge Walton said
that the 1994 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
(BATFE) exemption granted to hobby rockets as "propellant actuated
devices" (PADs) remains valid.
This means that unless and until BATFE properly promulgates a rule
rescinding the 1994 PADs exemption, fully assembled rocket motors
(regardless of weight) are propellant actuated devices under the law and
are exempt from regulation by BATFE. "
There was also a letter to the ATF saying we interpreted the Judges
ruling that the PAD exemption had no weight limits. The ATF did not
formally respond (AFAIK) except to start the rule making process.
Yes, the "Urgent Motion for Early Status Conference" at
http://www.tripoli.org/documents/batfe/UrgentMotionforEarlyStatusConference.pdf
But they did not get what they wanted. Hmmm. I seem to have left the
judges order from that conference off of my web site. Easily corrected:
http://home.earthlink.net/~schultdw/regulation/Court%2010-19-04%20order%20from%20early%20status%20conference.pdf
That is pretty long. If it gets truncated or otherwise mangled, try:
http://home.earthlink.net/~schultdw/regulation /
which will give you a file directory. Pick the 10-19-04 court order.
NAR and TRA engaged in wishful thinking about the scope of the April
2004 decision. The judge never said what exemption was in place, just
that the 2000 letter constituted an improper rule making. He
deliberately avoided declaring assembled rocket motors to be PAD's:
"7 Because the Court finds that the ATF's pronouncement regarding the
applicability of the PAD exemption violates the OCCA and APA's notice
and comment requirement, it need not address whether sport model rockets
are in fact PADs." -- page 20
It is difficult to reconcile this view of things with the results of the
November hearing.
Alas, no document is available from the 22 April conference. There is a
notice of transcript filed but it is not available over the internet.
--
David W. Schultz
http://home.earthlink.net/~david.schultz /
Vendors are being very cautious these days. The last launch I was at I
had to preorder the motor and make sure I burn it at the launch,
otherwise I had to return the reload.
My guess was this allowed the vendor to claim he was in "control" of
the material and never transferred it to a non LEUP holder.
jd
I am not saying you are right or wrong but I find it interesting that in the
most recent NAR Member Guidebook (March 2006) it states on page 63:
"The regulatory status of HPR motors is in a state of flux. At the time of
printing, motor reload kits consisting of propellant grains weighing 62.5
grams or less are not regulated as explosive articles, and both assembled
and single-use motors are classified as Propellant Actuated Devices (PADs)
and are therefore exempt from explosive regulations."
Polytechforum.com is a website by engineers for engineers. It is not affiliated with any of manufacturers or vendors discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.