My near mid air ‘incident’ happened while I was building up solo hours in the circuit. There was other traffic in the circuit, in particular a Piper Warrior ahead of me.
As I turned onto left base and made my radio call I believed (in my vast aviation experience!) that the Piper wasn’t losing altitude or looked like it was turning onto finals. I thought to myself ‘hmmm, they must be leaving the circuit’. I continued with my descent, turned onto finals, made my radio call and watched the Piper disappear out of view cos of my Cessna’s high wings.
Wrong.
As it turned out, they were still in the circuit, had made a mash of their finals and we were both aiming for the same piece of runway. As I was on finals I noticed the trusty Piper making a final descent just off my right side and I just thought ‘What the ****? Where did they come from?!’ When they realised what I was doing they announced a go-around on the dead side and I ended up completing my touch n go still quite confused to what just went on.
On the downwind my instructor came on the radio and asked me to make the next one a full stop. As I parked, my instructor approached with a look of death on his face.
He said from the ground it was one of the closest ones he’d ever seen. He was very understanding, talked me through what happened, what I should have done and convinced me an incident like this would make me a better pilot.
Lessons learned:
If somebody is ahead of you in the circuit, they are exactly that! AHEAD of you! They are also ahead of you in the landing pattern.
If the traffic is quite close in front, ‘S’ downwind, extend your downwind leg, or orbit to create more room.
Get on the bloody radio and ask them what their intentions are if you’re not sure!
PS. Excellent thread by the way.