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Old 11th Aug 2001, 12:38
  #55 (permalink)  
Genghis the Engineer
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Join Date: Feb 2000
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Being glib FNG, I might say that the Tiger lands on the numbers, stops well before the intersection, and then watches with a Yak-50 land in front of him quite safely....

A few months ago I was flying at Culdrose in something roughly Tiger sized (an X'Air if you know it), I joined left base and was told that I was No.2 to a Hawk with a fuel emergency. I did an orbit, watched him land and was then told that I was No.2 to a Jetstream. I briefly considered the wake-vortex picture of a 450kg X'Air behind a 6,000kg Jetstream and asked for safe separation. The Navy solution was to ask me to use the crosswind runway, which I did, landing on the numbers with a 10kn crosswind and stopping well before the intersection to watch 2 Jetstreams and another Hawk land in front of me before I taxiied across the active.

Second scenario, I fly from a place called Chilbolton in Hampshire. It's non-radio with a well defined join procedure (one of the reasons we're strictly PPR). Yesterday, I turned up, joined overhead, saw a 90° crosswind and because I was in a relatively slippery aircraft decided to use 06 which has no approach obstructions and allowed me to come in low. A few minutes after I landed somebody else turned up in a Thruster (glide ratio of a brick !), flew the same join procedure but selected 24. Had we arrived at the same time, because we both flew the same procudure which is designed to ensure that you see anything on finals for the wrong runway, we would have sorted ourselves out.

Anybody who flies from Popham during the May microlight show will be familiar with the use of 26 for light aircraft and 21 for microlights. Most of the microlights and a few of the light aircraft are non-radio. Procudures are published, and stuck to - the only near accident I've seen (and I've been there every year for the last 5, there are generally about 1000-2000 movements over the weekend) was a C150 taking off without checking around for microlight activity.

The bottom line I think is that in VFR airfield operations, radio or non-radio everybody needs to be utterly aware of what's going on throughout the circuit. There is no substitute to this - not the signal square, AFIS, ATC, whatever. If competent pilots behave well within this principle, then quite frankly an AFIS operator, etc. is a useful airfield facility - but he or she isn't, and shouldn't be, essential.

G
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