boscomantico wrote:
Well, yes: don’t do overhead joins!
And / or indeed. maybe the lesson here is: don’t do overhead departures (where there is an overhead join)…. I guess for a student pilot doing a navex with a map, compass and time-piece, the overhead departure is simple because it matches his simple line on a chart from the departing airfield and puts his speed close to cruise… so he has his reference starting time and position for his PLOG…. but (with some assistance from his instructor) the reference point can be some significant landmark nearby….of course once he is licensed he will just use GPS…
Unless the airport is in a valley there’s probably no good reason fir an overhead departure…
JasonC wrote:
Maybe it is me but I can’t see another aircraft in that video.
+1
Whilst crossing un-identified trafic is always abit unsettling, this did not look like it was that close.
Jason, did you the watch the video in full screen mode or see the on-screen text pointing to the plane? You might also watch the circles on the powerflarm device. They get smaller and smaller as the plane gets closer and closer and then it beeps at closest approach. The reason for the absence of avoiding bank on my part was simply because it was all over in two seconds or so. 250kts closing speed is very fast. (Isn’t that the point?)
I do think it is difficult to judge the distance between the planes from the video. However, the other plane appears to be at precisely the same height as mine and when it passed down the right hand side of my plane it seemed remarkably close. Remember that the camera has a wide screen lens. The video shows the closing speed is clearly very fast.
I don’t think the other plane should be where it is. It’s flying north to south through the overhead when overhead joins are south to north that day. It’s too close to simply be departing the overhead as you say. If it were me, I would not be flying over the runway in the wrong direction to depart the overhead.
Howard thanks for posting, and it is worth trying to build a better situational picture to understand the incident.
You would have joined overhead and made a dead side descending call to establish a right hand crosswind join on the upwind end of 06 at EGSR’s circuit altitude of 1000 feet. If the other pilot was departing to the south he should have departed on one of the circuit tracks, in this case also crosswind. How did he end up on an opposite track to you? In theory when you called overhead he should have been below you and flying away from you as you set up for dead side descending.
I’ll look at it again to try and position the aircraft, but perhaps you met with the other aircraft in the climbout on crosswind and possibly outside the ATZ?
Building a picture of what circuit traffic is doing, or planning to do, and where to expect them is a real skill.
May I say your lookout is very good, but a bit fast – a steady move along the horizon, with your eyes searching plus/minus 200 feet may be recommended.
Howard watched it again and a very tidy circuit by you, with calls in the right places. The video timing has an edit so there may be a gap to explain how the training puddlejumper climbed 1600 feet in just over a minute.
He doesn’t appear to have been based at EGSR as a -KI is not part of their training fleet, so if on a solo navex he came from elsewhere.
His mistake was not to have departed on crosswind at circuit altitude, but to have climbed to his cruising altitude (?) in the ATZ presumably on a crosswind track.
Again posting this is very helpful as it highlights a threat to look out for when joining in the UK.
May I recommend the pop up burger stand at EGSR, possibly the best burger run in Essex.
Nice landing, the narrow runway creates an illusion which catches people out.
IMO it is very difficult to judge form the video just how close the aircraft were (which is perhaps no surprise with this type of recording).
I worry about pilots that are not aware or ignore the approach to any airport and the tendency of some to fly close or through the approach for one of these reasons, which seems to be the case here. It doesnt seem to me good airmanship although I know EASA has its own views on airmanship as well these days.
Hard to Judge the distance from the video, but looks like maybe ~100m? It’s not inconceivable that the had you in sight and decided to take no evasive manoeuvre.
When VFR and hearing about “opposite traffic”, I usually turn on the landing and taxi lights, makes one a bit more visible. I think in busy regions such as near White Waltham EGLM I probably saw a few planes that close up.
The surprise element is obviously much more destabilising. Having a close pass that you don’t expect is obviously more scary than passing maybe at a closer distance but when both see the traffic (and no one gets scared).
The slow motion video makes you look really angry at the guy!!
Interesting video on several counts.
I realise the POV of the camera is not the POV of you the pilot but it makes me glad I fly an aircraft with a bubble canopy!
Even full screen I couldn’t make out the FLARM rings but I think it perfectly possible that the other pilot did have good enough situational awareness from your radio calls, and possibly from his FLARM, to have you in sight, and it only takes one pilot to see the other to avoid a collision. I accept it was probably shocking to see but the other aircraft was above the horizon which means it was above you and perhaps still in the climb so probably divergent.
You were making an overhead join but were a couple of hundred feet lower than the oft declaimed 2000ft, which in this case was arguably fortuitous.
Those are scary moments. So you were not (made) aware of the other traffic? If you were not… definitely an airprox by my book. It is our saving grace the big sky principle still works.
Airprox means an occurence in which two (2) or more aircraft come into such close proximity that a threat to the safety of the aircraft exists or may exist, in airspace where separation is a pilot responsibility.
I see that you use a portable FLARM with antennas inside the aircraft. My (admittedly short) experience with the same setup is that it is next to useless inside a metal aircraft. I’ve seen the range to a mode C/S target change by many miles just by banking my aircraft towards or away from the target.
(Is QFE still commonly used in the UK?)
