“I’m a life-long career aviation professional (pilot, mechanic. & engineer) whose attraction to the occupation was fueled by early model building and flying model aircraft. I can’t count the number of colleagues I’ve worked with over the years whose first steps toward an aviation career path were similarly inspired. By all accounts, the industry faces future critical shortages of personnel to serve these occupations. The proposed regulations constitute a choke point not just on the model aviation industry, but also on a major pipeline that serves to populate commercial aviation with professionals. A joke as old as aviation itself has that “you gotta love doing this, because you sure ain’t getting paid enough for it”. It’s no joke. Where I live, mechanics and engineers make more in the oil and gas industry than I.ever did in aviation. A 22 year-old truck driver with a high school g.e.d., and CDL can earn $70,000/year here. An aspiring airline pilot leaves college at the same with a degree, an ATP, and $100,000+ student debt, and it will take him 20-25 years (with the best possible luck) to match that truck driver’s career income. It’s passion that supplies the commercial aviation biz with the people that make it work. A $125 almost-ready-to-fly poly-foam radio-control airplane that you can fly safely just about anywhere is “the romance of aviation” in a box. Regulating that out of existence will have consequences.”