Risk of Mid-Air Collision At Navigational Beacons
Dear All,
Lovely day on Saturday in the south. The world and his wife were out flying, or so it seemed.
As I was returning to Elstree about lunchtime, at BNN got very close to a PA 28 who clearly hadn't seen me, then saw 3 further planes all approaching the beacon within 2 mins. Congestion is of course made worse with the TMA at 2400 ft in the choke spots around London.
Thinking about this later, I wonder why I, and many pilots plot courses to "beacon hop" when going from A to B, and have forgotten to use our dead reckoning techniques , or can't be bothered to put in loads of waypoints on our GPS's. There always will be a greater traffic density around VOR's and really it would be good airmanship, in VMC conditions not to slavishly follow them.
What do others think / do ?
LF