BeechBaby wrote:
What I did note however was a lack of look out on the part of the pilot. Lots of fiddling, wiping, twiddling, looking inside, but not much look out.
What you see is an edited video. Of course I will eventually “fiddle”. Don’t you have to ever look at your charts? At least I have my chart right in front of me on the yoke and I don’t have to look down on a paper chart or move a big paper chart in my field of vision.
If you look at the video at the time of encounter, you will see that I am looking outside. If I was “fiddling” looking at my PCAS instead of looking outside, I would have seen the ALERT.
MedEwok wrote:
I didn’t hear ANY German R/T on the video?
I didn’t post conversations were I’m not participating for privacy reasons.
Perhaps Beechbaby was referring to the other pilot? Do we know what he saw? It is well established fact that keeping a good lookout (who doesn’t need to fiddle and twiddle knobs etc) only works for cases you can easily see.
My closest miss was actually at a full ATC airfield. The student pilot in the Cherokee who was instructed to follow me, instead followed the Malibu I was instructed to follow.
Just before turning final, I lifted the wing a little to take a quick look before turning and there was the planform of a Cherokee uncomfortably close halfway done turning to final, I think if he hand’t been halfway through his turn I’d have been able to see the whites of his eyes. I think the Cherokee pilot was on an early solo.
Peter wrote:
. Two of the worst I recall were one at Zell am See, with somebody flying around near the runway at about 1500ft AGL
Assuming that
…a circuit is typical at 1000ft AGL and
…the taught rule at my school (1hr away) was/is “at least 500ft above circuit” is away from traffic/circuit for VFR purposes
…it was possibly ok from the pilots petspective.
Not that I would like it or find it a particularly good idea. But 1000ft i find mostly sufficient. And would generally call the airfield (e.g. when flying near LOIJ throug the narrow valleys)
Zell with their main in/out route is pretty prone to near misses above the lake (often when landing aircraft descend further than suggested) or in the valley, as you cannot see around the mountain in the circuit from N to 08.
Didn’t look that critical, but still disquieting. I notice you have a traffic monitor or what is that on the glareshield. No alarm whatsoever?
I’ve had several of these kind of encounters in recent years primarily at uncontrolled airfields. I’ve aborted approaches several times and went out of the airport area waiting for a more quiet part.
This demonstrates multiple problems: Airports handling traffic with international visitors but talking in their native tongue. One of my pet hates, should be banned, English only. But obviously the opposite is predominant, where certain countries would like to ban anyone not being fluent in their own tongue. So maybe avoid airfields which talk in a language you don’t understand may be the first thing which comes to my mind.
Making Mode C mandatory everywhere would be a start. Then people who value their life could install some kind of warning device. So, here we go again 
Brussells has prohibited new Mode C installs, so it has to be Mode S, and that radiates your aircraft reg, so, hey ho, some large % will never go for it.
If one doesn’t mind sh1tting on one’s doorstep then one could, if one gets the reg, “have words” with them about it. In reality that sort of thing needs to be done with great care, and since most flyers are renting they have little power to change anything anyway.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I notice you have a traffic monitor or what is that on the glareshield.
It is a Zaon PCAS MRX. From the video I can see that it is indicating something, but I was busy looking outside as I was near the field and “missed” the PCAS alert.
Konstanz airfield has a very nice published approach / departure procedure. If everybody is following it this encounter should not happen.
The aircraft in the video above seems to be approaching from south / southeast at ~2800 feet. The video is recorded using wide angle lens and it might appear that he is approaching from the east but it is more like southeast.
Also this was in connection with Aero Expo 2018 in Friedrichshafen. Konstanz was published as one of available airfields for international visitors to arrive. Maybe at least during these days local traffic could try to switch to English.
Dimme wrote:
Maybe at least during these days local traffic could try to switch to English.
Why? Not everyone can speak English.
mdoerr wrote:
Why? Not everyone can speak English.
I didn’t say they have to, I said they could try to. Seriously, just think about it for a moment. You* are expecting hundreds of foreign aircraft that don’t speak the local language at your* local airfield for a couple of days. You* don’t speak English yourself. What would you* do? Maybe a wiser choice would be to stay on the ground. For your* own and everybody else’s safety.
* Here you is used as in a third person pronoun, not you user mdoerr in particular.
