Wow, At some point I am thinking that there was a downwind turn involved.
Don't know Trent, Never met him, not going to watch the video, as the reality seems pretty simple here. This situation sucks for all.
FAA inspectors and NTSB judges are people. Like all people they form opinions, which are influenced by not only their own life experiences, but also from co-workers and job training- and by their boss.
Why is this important? Human nature. FAA and NTSB folks, generally are NOT SMALL PLANE PEOPLE!! Many come from government or military backgrounds- JETS! To them what many of us do is lunacy.
Start from there, and think about it.
Same issues with police, park rangers and such; do you hear the news about 'militarizing of police'? Even the BLM has SWAT teams... think about that. What do they get trained? Everyone is out to kill you! So when they come into a situation that is their outlook. Transfer that attitude into our sleepy town of 2,000 people, it is sort of stupid. In Chicago- heck yes that could be true.
Our local FSDO and I had a discussion about 14 years ago after a neighbor complained about my low pass in front of his house, where I eventually landed. The neighbor was told to mind his own business, but I was given cell phone numbers to call the inspectors and notify them when I had a situation that I knew might get reported. They wanted to be armed with information when the region office asked questions in the future to make their lives easier.
Long and short, you can either be looked at as a compliant aviator, or a bandit if you do this type of flying. It is fine to be a bandit and silent, but right or wrong, eventually some FSDO person is going to dislike your actions and start a process that will cost you time, money, and anguish. I don't have enough time to be dealing with that now.
My solution is to try to work with the FSDO folks to be more informed about their lives, and them about my flying. Their familiarity with what I do allows them to understand it more, and appreciate that there is skill and judgement used. When the eventual issue comes up, we start with at least mutual respect, instead of advasarial communications.
Again, these are people. They really don't want any more adversarial issues and problems than you or I do. But they have a job to do.
Again, sometimes a little respect and time getting to know the guys that will be calling can go a long ways. In fact, it can be to our own advantage to be able to ask questions directly to them, so if a problem does arise you can fall back on their statements. Like: Is this situation considered congested?
Congested areas: There are definitions on populations per square mile that map that out. There is also many case law situations that show a gathering in a normally non-congested area, (Burning Man as an example), will be considered congested.
In a flying career everyone will make a mistake. The FAA uses the word 'compliance'. Being viewed as compliant, or non-compliant, may cause the flow chart of FSDO action to change directions.