Back to the Mod, far be it for me to not see some value in anything that boosts any capability of any thing. I'm automatically drawn in to want it. I acknowledge your point on the dubious likelihood of those using a range extender without shirking some unenforceable regulation, and fully realize, as you do, the absolute comedy that comes with anyone's assertion that this would have any influence to dissuade a would-be scoff-law from installing and using it. One need only execute a simple search on YouTube for a long list of Vloggers who are eager to discuss the FAA regulations which they are violating with the flight they just flew and are now narrating. They even get into the specific and detailed justifications as to why those regulations are "not worth following" based on their very valid opinion.
I'm new to this sector of civil aviation, but I'm pretty well versed in the other parts by virtue of a really strange career path that touched normally disassociated parts of industry. One of those corners was working for the FAA's ATO in the environmental compliance team attached to the Airspace and Rules shop, the people who write the regulations which define every inch of the NAS. If that job sounds boring, my God, he thankful you'll never know that level and duration of boredom. So boring was my tree to Lee upon, in fact, that I often found my way into other FAA forests and saw what raising my leg on their tree was like. One of those trees, belonged to the FS-800 office, the National Airmen Flight Safety Standards Office. That's big word for FAA enforcers, the muscle, the ones who actually determined who had violated a regulation, and what the appropriate enforcement action would be. At least insofar as the certificates airmen and mechanics. Airlines, manufacturers, and ATO systems providers were haunted by their own set of enforcement demons.
However, all that tough talk and stern looks like when you accidentally tart in an elevator, was just that, talk. Why? Simple, supply and demand.
Federal Aviation Regulations are probably as common, if not more common in a statistical day then speeding drivers. The system from day one has relied on a self-identifying honor system of regulatory compliance, and most are content to leave it that way. ATC deals with the stupidity of pilots on an hourly basis, but adamantly maintain the will not be strong armed in becoming the nation's Sky Enforcers. The steady and perpetual supply of hourly, daily, and weekly regulatory violations so far outpaces the FAAs ability to record them, much less dole out the enforcement actions for a tenth.
It's the system we have, and it's difficult to argue it isn't being handled appropriately, based on the ridiculously low risk associated with every aspect. Well, until something bad happens like Boeing 737 MAX, or Colgen ARE augering into Buffalo on night.
It'll happen, and everyone knows it. Some poor unsuspecting guy who is otherwise a swell fella, he'll go above 400' where it really mattered, or pushed the Line of Sight doctrine a touch too far, and a drone gets invested into the number 2 of some Airbus destined for Charlotte, causes an unconstrained turbine failure, and had stuff happens. The rules which will come from that, the ones that anyone knows wouldn't have done a thing to prevent the accident, those are called "Blood Laws", and none of it is good!
