The FAA law seems to be that a 500-ft ceiling or 1000-ft ceiling be self imposed by pilots over residential areas, here are the FAA rules regarding this subject taken directly from the FAA website (I copied the relevant section):

b) Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft.

(c) Over other than congested areas. An altitude of 500 feet above the surface, except over open water or sparsely populated areas. In those cases, the aircraft may not be operated closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.

So, is Montara or Moss beach etc considered a ‘congested area’? Seems that we are certainly a ‘town or settlement’, therefore should the ceiling not be 1000-ft? Seems so to me, so I feel then that several pilots regularly break the law over our coastal towns. I understand that we are on the approach run to land at HMB, and I have nothing against flying at all, I’ve taken flights over Montara myself (at well over 1000-ft I might mention I had a very good pilot). What really pisses me off is ignorant pilots that blatantly ignore the FAA rules and buzz our towns for ‘fun’ causing horrendous noise pollution and putting lives at great risk on the ground (the sub 500-ft cowboys). Mark my words, one day a law suit will happen and unfortunately every aircraft flying out of HMB may be penalized by the actions of a few bad pilots. Or worse still an accident.

Please, I urge all the ‘good’ pilots to identify and self police the ‘bad’ pilots.

Kevin

PS: I have posted this elsewhere as an answer to another post, I just wanted to pose the question here in the Environment forum, sorry for double posting