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Old 14th July 2003 | 05:18
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Mike Cross
 
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 1,784
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From: Savannah GA & Portsmouth UK
As no-one else has had a go here's my two penn'orth.

I flew in Saturday lunchtime and out again Sunday late afternoon. I had no problems arriving or departing. The movement control was quick and slick, as it needs to be with that many movements.

It is up to individual pilots to use their own judgement as to whether or not they are happy operating in that environment. If, having read the AIC, you have any reservations about your own abilities you should think carefully about whether you should go.

A previous visit to the airfield is obviously very helpful. There is a rumour going about that one arriving aircraft asked for taxi instructions. "But you haven't landed yet!" said the controller. "Yes I have", said the pilot sitting on the ground at Aston Down. (Maybe someone can confirm whether this is true or just a good rumour)

Making everything work requires good teamwork, with everyone doing their bit correctly. From what I saw, ATC and the marshallers did a first-rate job, as did most of the pilots.

The AIC was not as clear as it could be. There were heights alongside the advisory routes with no clear explanation of what they were for. Where there was only one height one assumes it was the height to fly at, but where there were two it wasn't obvious whether it signified a height band to fly within or one height for arriving and one for departing traffic.

Advisory routes also had danger points to watch out for. For example at Malmesbury I was approaching from the east with a right turn of more than 90 degrees to make while another route was feeding people in from the south-west heading towards me in my 10 o'clock and at the same time another route was converging from the north-east (my five o'clock), all on the same point.

However Kemble has a lot of CAS round it so it can't have been easy to design the system, particularly as it's not been done before at that airfield.

I also went to GFWE at Kemble earlier this year. IMHO the control at the PFA Rally was a lot better (particularly as this time I was not cleared to land on a runway that already had a departing aircraft sitting on it ready to roll)

Mike
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