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Old 5th Nov 2005, 09:46
  #1037 (permalink)  
Gertrude the Wombat
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Cambridge, England, EU
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Cambridge, a busyish commercial airfield
Busyness at Cambridge varies tremendously. Sometimes you're the only person flying, you can join the circuit however and wherever you like, other days you can't get a word in edgeways on either frequency and you've got three full circuits - choppers at 600', us lot at 1000', and the bizjets and fast jets at 1500' - as well as commercial traffic coming straight in to land.

(OK, so I've only been there whilst a bizjet was flying circuits once, and I've only shared the circuit with fast jets once (I think they were practising for Duxford the next day or something), and most days there aren't any airliner movements, but you can get all of these.)

Oh, and if you're on final for the main runway but it's occupied you might be offered the choice of going around or landing on the parallel grass runway - if you're vaguely aware that this might happen it'll be less of a surprise if it actually does! Actually a student on solo XC might be better off going around given this choice if they haven't practised this with an instructor first - sliding quite a long way sideways to line up with a different runway whilst low on final approach is possibly not something for a student to try for the first time for real on their own.

Most likely though you'll be sharing the circuit with a couple of other light aircraft and that's all.
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