Mine vary with aircraft and airfield, but there’s no way I’m going to establish on a 1.5nm final. To me that’s a straight-in approach, not part of a circuit.
A few days ago, I was transiting a Military TMA (just like any TMA, except they can open and close at will). The other aircraft on freq suddenly couldn’t be reached. I offered to relay but we were both a few miles from the air base and he was at 3000 feet.
How do you think any person working as ATC (especially military, whose goal is also to protect their base from any kind of threats) would react ??
I do my best with ATC too but sometimes, squelch or else makes me miss calls and that happens at every shift for them.
If you look at GA from a CAA POV, ie the interaction we have from ATC and the reports they receive (about the incidents, never about what works fine), their attitude is not so surprising. Giving service to VFR traffic seems for them a hurdle with little reward.
You would need a very professional and respectable team of people to represent our activity towards them.
Ps : it reminds me the parable of the weeds.
Jujupilote,
I think this comes down fundamentally to your view of what the CAA is there to do and who should “own” the airspace. Some people take the view that there should be a right of flight and ability for individuals to travel around in the air with as much freedom as possible, with all users able to operate together, and a CAA should attempt to facilitate that. Or airspace is a government / national authorities patch of property and they should do as they fit and if they want to have an easy life just restricting it to those deemed worthy (military , big business, airlines, etc). A lowly pleb can but dream of having the good fortune to be granted access to such airspace.
I think GA should be less apologetic to those wanting to reserve a piece of the sky to themselves. Yes of course, respect controlled airspace as much as humanly possible. But it is not an easy task.
Let’s not jump on other pilots at every occasion as if their mistakes were unforgivable and should be the end of small GA. The situation you described happens all the time with “professional” aircraft, which you know if you have a habit of listening to 121.5. There are all sorts of possible reasons for this.
We all have to learn first before ascending into the ranks of the skygods. Commercial aviation could not exist without small GA, let’s not forget this.
Rwy20 wrote:
I think GA should be less apologetic to those wanting to reserve a piece of the sky to themselves. Yes of course, respect controlled airspace as much as humanly possible
Yes it is public space and public asset, those who make money out of it should facilitate access to those who spend money on it, CAT/Mil/GA/Sports coexistence dilemma is a really non-event, many countries are good examples
“the idea of a stabilized approach is of course an important concept to learn,”
With a low mass, low wing loading, aircraft, with quick response to control inputs, and an airport where low windspeed is not very common, the concept has great philosophical value.
Maoraigh
He, he 
Peter, I dont agree. Your argument is inevitably attractive and I can see would suit the CAA, where or not that the CAA sets the standards, and appoints the examiners. The qualification is to operate as pilot in command and the CAA must look to its own shortcomings if your argument is to carry weight.
Maoraigh wrote:
With a low mass, low wing loading, aircraft, with quick response to control inputs, and an airport where low windspeed is not very common, the concept has great philosophical value.
Even for those aircraft the core idea of a stabilized approached – to be all set for landing 2 minutes before and not 20 sec. after impact to the ground – might make some sense…
It’s not unfair to consider these patronising; it’s also not surprising some of us find the encouragement to adopt airline style practices inappropriate, after all we are not airlines.
But we do have a high accident rate; some types of accidents used to happen in CAT, and don’t anymore since they have adopted those standards. We can’t blame DGAC and EASA for trying to share those solutions with us. Not sure people respond much better to dry memos than to cartoons, at least those got the discussion going.
