My nearest miss was at a controlled field (Gloucester). The student pilot behind me who had been instructed to follow me mistook the Meridian on final for me (never assume student pilots know aircraft types!) and inadvertently ended up cutting in front of me. I didn’t see him till I was rolling out of my base to final turn when I saw him hove into view turning base to final at an uncomfortably close distance. Never let your guard down, especially at a busy airfield with a control tower (it’s too easy to let your guard down because there is ATC).
BeechBaby wrote:
Petakas, well done, from the video looks like you handled that situation well,
Ohhh no it was not me ! I am the one just posting the video of someone else here !
The aircraft I fly has nowadays a TAS605 exactly for such dangers but still I do not rely 100% on it since there can always be blind spots at such close proximity directly below or above or non display of traffic if the other aircraft has a transpoder malfunction or switched off. Its just one more safety feature as an add on to the human eye and situational awareness regarding traffic around you in general.
alioth wrote:
never assume student pilots know aircraft types!
Never assume any pilot knows aircraft types other than the one(s) he is flying himself… (you can count me in as well). Therefore it is better if traffic information would be given in a more general way, e.g. just the aircraft category: glider, helicopter, single, twin, jet. Around here, this is what you will be told in most cases, often only “light type” summarizing everything that is not an airliner.
Things could be so easy if people would just talk to each other. Where I fly and instruct it is common practise to inform ATC, or the radio operator in case of a small field, when a student is doing solo patterns. Every other traffic will then be told “we have a solo student in the pattern”. Nothing else is needed to avoid a situation as in the video above.
I had a similar scare (but not as close) on my first solo triangular nav. There was a parachute dropping plane and traffic in the circuit of my first destination aerodrome. Since I had only been taught joins via the overhead to that date, but knew that you must avoid that when there is para jumping activity, I was at a loss about how to join the circuit. Since I saw the active runway directly ahead of me, I announced myself on long final. At about 500 ft, the Porter cut in front of me from the left (or more like from above), landed, and turned around at the end of the runway so on very short final I was now facing the plane on the runway and had to go around. I then made another bad judgment call and turned to the right because I was worried about the parachute jumpers from above, but as I recall that actually took me more towards them.
Flew away for a few miles, came back on the downwind side and joined downwind directly at circuit height – not a method I had been taught until then but I had learned my lessons about joining a circuit. On the ground I collected myself for 15 minutes, apologized saying I was a student pilot on my first solo away from base and then flew on.
I don´t have a video but this picture says all. I was on the other end of the rope (out of camera field of view). The glider has us just on the horizon and sees me when already crossed our track. I had seen him 0.2 second before our tracks crossed, no time to do anything. I can´t tell you the color of his eyes but I did recognize what color were the ornaments. He has heard the engine noise…..
Things could be so easy if people would just talk to each other. Where I fly and instruct it is common practise to inform ATC, or the radio operator in case of a small field, when a student is doing solo patterns. Every other traffic will then be told “we have a solo student in the pattern”. Nothing else is needed to avoid a situation as in the video above.
I might agree fir the first solo, but not the subsequent ones. If we create an artifical environment for all his solos, then what are they useful for?
