Well if the Vans was making a maximum performance climb at take off and was likely to be at circuit height by the end of the runway at a towered field, then a) ATC should have known about it and made the DA40 aware or instructed something else, b) the Vans pilot should have been aware of crosswind joining traffic. What was the reason for the steep rate of climb? There is no terrain to clear....
Shoreham often clears people to join on a left crosswind for 20. You could argue that he should have checked clear above and even looked left and right a bit. Can't really fault the DA40 crew in that case as he would have been approaching from about the only blind spot a DA40 has - below and left.
Good effort by the DA40, if this is what happened.
Last edited by englishal; 5th July 2011 at 18:57.