Sunday evening coming back into Wycombe it was a bit of a zoo!
Having travelled back through the haze from Gloucestershire in eery silence - cleared direct through Brize, hardly another sole around... but when we QSY'd from Brize Radar to Wycombe TWR, about half an hour from sunset and with fairly poor viz (7km?) the radio was alive with I think about 6 in the circuit, half a dozen on the ground asking to taxi, and maybe another half dozen asking for rejoins, along with us.
We've got some great controllers at our place - but without the GND frequency not in use our friend's voice was becoming mroe and more stressed! So for a while just told rejoins to remain outside controlled airspace and anyone on the ground to "standby".
You have to understand that throughout the winter our grass gets a bit boggy, so we land on the tarmac 25/07, and have to backtrack to avoid taxiing via the grass. This of course exacerbates things - especially when someone lands long and is then slow to get back, sometimes leading to go-arounds for the person on finals. Yet still, I'm at a loss to understand why it would be so busy this late on a Sunday afternoon with poor vis?
Anyway, he did a great job - so thanks - everyone eventually got what hey wanted / needed. And things calmed down considerably once the controller on break came back to open up the GND frequency to relieve the TWR frequency.
Hats off the ladies and gents who do this for us - must be stressful on occasion - not sure I'd cope!
Andy <img src="smile.gif" border="0">
[ 21 February 2002: Message edited by: Aussie Andy ]</p>