ATC typically don’t mix rotary wing aircraft into the round-and-round traffic pattern
In one of the US newspapers I read that those helis came from neighbouring airports and belonged to flight schools training there in the pattern.
I think: in the pattern the whole concentration should be focussed on looking outside and since all the systems available to us have a lag they might not be so helpful at 1000 ft AGL anyway. To switch the audio off with flaps is a good compromise, I think – especially when there’s still optical warnings on the MFD.
It is also annoying when the traffic system interrupts the radio in the traffic pattern.
the whole concentration should be focussed on looking outside
I agree one should be looking outside, and most people do that, but a lot of traffic (the great majority IME) is never spotted by anybody which is why people pay 5 figures for these systems in the first place. They are not useful for enroute IFR because most of that is in CAS or at a high altitude where almost nobody else is flying. So where are they useful? Very few pilots of “advanced aircraft” fly enroute at 1000ft, so the main use has to be in the vicinity of departure or arrival aerodromes. I don’t know about elsewhere in Europe but most of UK’s midairs happened during that phase.
Also you get some people doing risky stuff, e.g. climbing rapidly after takeoff, reaching circuit height by the end of the runway, and conflicting with crosswind-joining traffic. That was a 1x fatal RV loss at Shoreham, fairly recently. The crosswind traffic would not have spotted the aircraft climbing up into them from underneath, especially as the angle at which it was presented was almost constant (from the AAIB report). It is very hard to spot traffic presented at a constant angle, and most traffic on a genuine collision course will be at a constant angle i.e. stationary in your field of view.
since all the systems available to us have a lag they might not be so helpful at 1000 ft AGL anyway
That is not true for the TAS605 I have on which the delay is a few seconds at most.
To switch the audio off with flaps is a good compromise, I think – especially when there’s still optical warnings on the MFD.
That implies that one is not looking outside but is scanning the MFD for traffic – in the circuit!
I think that is a stupid system. Maybe not on US stats but definitely on the ones I know about.
That is not true for the TAS605 I have on which the delay is a few seconds at most.
A few seconds is a long time when you’re in the traffic pattern with some other airplanes. Listen to that ATC audio again – how quickly things happened. … (it’s only a “few seconds” aswell with the Skywatch system, which is very similar)
I did not mean that one should “scan” the MFD for traffic. But you have the IFR or VFR approach chart active on the MFD anyway, and you will see the yellow window pop up. Well, it’s a compromise …. but it’s not really much better if the TAS screams “traffic, traffic” all the time and interupts the radio all the time when there’s more traffic in the pattern ….
FWIW, IME, a few seconds is not a problem because GA planes don’t fly that fast. If a nasty situation is going to develop, it had been developing for some tens of seconds beforehand. The final audible warning happens only in the final stages, and I find that the audible warning does not happen at circuit height unless somebody is really seriously close.
So, what I find useful is to keep half an eye on the TAS display when approaching the circuit and while in the circuit, and this doesn’t need to be done often. My guess is that either this heli didn’t have a transponder, or the SR22 pilot wasn’t watching the TAS, or there was something like masking going on (but generally you get a chance to spot traffic well before it gets close enough to get masked). I do often find that the audio warnings happen very late, on traffic at same level so no masking should be taking place, and that suggests a bodged transponder installation because I see bizjets and big jets from 10-15nm away.
The only irritating thing, I find, is the warning one gets on short final, due to traffic waiting to depart. That could be solved by disabling audible warnings when full flap is selected. But disabling them on gear-down or half-flap just seems very wrong…
Yes, that could be a solution. I guess all of these solutions have their pros and cons, and since every traffic situation is different there’s probably no “one fits all” solution for this.
I just discovered that my my Skywatch system can be upgraded to SW version 1.8 and will give range and altitude in the aural warning aswell, like “12 o’clock, same altitude, heading north”. Does yours have that already?
I ought to record it someday but my recollection is “traffic [], same altitude, less than 1 mile” or similar.
The bit in the [] brackets is the bearing but I don’t recall the format.
Will try to remember it next time.
It’s probably standardized and the same as Skywatch: “Traffic, Traffic, Six O’clock, same altitude, less than a mile”
It seems to me the problem was lack of situational awareness by one or more of the pilots, maybe also the ATC. In my opinion you want something to aid in obtaining situational awareness, certainly not something screaming “traffic, traffic”. On an uncontrolled GA airfield with lots of traffic and activity, we are often talking distances of feet apart, not miles.
It seems to me the problem was lack of situational awareness by one or more of the pilots
Well, obviously 
But where does SA come from?
Traditionally, here in the UK, one uses the Royal Air Force term “Mk 1 eyeball” which “by definition” is all you need. And that concept is still plugged by PPL instructors everywhere.
The commercial world is a bit more practical and they don’t want to kill lots of passengers (bad for business). Also the national CAAs push for “safety” and they look bad if lots of passengers keep getting killed, So TCAS is nowadays mandatory for aircraft above a certain size etc.
Private pilots who have spent the money on TCAS/TAS extremely quickly realise how bad the Mk 1 eyeball is. They also very quickly realise how bad an ATC-provided radar service is (many contacts which one would think the controller does see are not actually passed to the pilot, for some reason, probably controller workload).
My point is that TAS is very useful in the circuit too, and suppressing it is a bad idea.
