-
FAA 1A Letter & the Surveyors Stamp
Hi All,
We are registered in Illinois & Wisconsin, so we have done quite a few wireless site surveys (boundary work, lease areas & easements) in both states over the years. These also include 1A/2C Letters. Our office is out of northern Illinois. Just recently our client AT&T has come back to us stating that the FAA wont accept (rejects) the 1A Letters we prepared due to our Wisconsin surveyors stamp having the city (in Illinois) listed on the stamp. This is directly from our client…
“I just got off the phone with Jessica from Network Compliance regarding this. Based on what she tells me, this is apparently a new requirement straight from FAA HQ (apparently it is not a Wisconsin-specific requirement nor is it simply one particular FAA bureaucrat being snippy). AT&T Regulatory apparently fought this as well, as they thought this was ridiculous, and were flatly refused. I??m told that most of the sites that AT&T have already filed with the FAA have been grandfathered in.”
They also said that the FAA will only accept the 1A Letter prepared by a surveyor doing business (office based in) the state the letter was done in. So modifying our stamp by removing the city/state we are working out of wouldn’t help. We haven’t been provided any sort of “official” document stating the requirements, it only has been by word of mouth.
Have any of you guys run into this? Thoughts?
Thanks.
Mike
-
14 Replies
-
No
-
Open an office in each state you do business or take on an associate surveyor that lives in those states.
-
Might be the dumbest thing I’ve heard of.
-
It sounds like an unconstitutional regulation – restricting interstate commerce – to me. But until somebody challenges it in court I’d say A Harris’s answer is a good one.
-
Heck I can get from my house in MD to PA, WV, VA & DC faster than some of you guys from Wyoming and Montana can get from your house to a grocery store.
-
You may need to just get a PO Box in Wisconsin, and call it your Office.
-
I’ve done some of these surveys, I wonder what would happen if it straddled a state line (had one that was close), that would be interesting, I guess I would not be allowed. The world is a silly place sometimes.
-
Thanks for the input. We are waiting for some sort of documentation to go along with what was relayed to us. Its one the of silliest things we have heard in a while. A PO Box in Wisconsin might be the easiest solution.
-
I believe it will take a physical address with a licensed surveyor there full time.
-
Mike,
Let me get this straight. You are based in Illinois and doing FAA 1-A business in Wisconsin. Licensed in both states. You send Illinois based staff to Wisconsin to do this work. Your Wisconsin stamp has a reference the fact that you are based in Illinois?
Seems like a really busy stamp. Our stamp in California only has room for a name, number and an expiration date, all encompassed by the name of the state. How would the FAA know you are based in another state?
I must be missing something.
I am really curious.
JA, PLS SoCal
-
I can’t imagine any reason except silly bureaucratic whims for not accepting that state’s license as sufficient qualification regardless of where the office is. Actually, for FAA purposes not involving boundaries, a license in ANY state should be adequate to determine lat-lon-elev.
Fortunately most county recorders haven’t caught that bug. That would kinda cut the incentive for getting licensed in multiple states.
. -
I’ve done hundreds of 1A certificates in 5 states. There is no authority for the FAA to reject a certificate based on office location.
-
Hi JA,
Yes, our office is in northern Illinois and we are Licensed in both Illinois & Wisconsin. Our Wisconsin Seal has our office city & state location on it. I thought the same thing about the stamp (Office location), but i have seen this with others. I think we are going to see if we can get a stamp with just the surveyors name /# on it. The 1A letter we prepared is on our letterhead which has our office contact info on it.
-
That sounds like a busy stamp to me also. I have the office location in the logo but the stamp is simple except for Steamboat.
I would try to run something like that through one of my engineering partners who have offices in multiple states. They would do it for a minor cut of the action.
Log in to reply.