How can we mitigate our exposure to faster aircraft at uncontrolled airports and landing zones?

See and avoid still means look outside.
Radio is an aid to see and avoid not a substitution.
Find big airplane landing lights far out and high.
Lengthen downwind to fall in behind the long final.
Shorten downwind when we do not see (ok and hear) anyone on final.
Communicate as much as practicable.
Ground clutter is real. We see poorly those lower than us. We see better those higher than us.
In high wing raise wing often on base to see and avoid faster airplanes on final.
Make the base to final turn a bit early to avoid the centerline extended until short final.
If startled by potential midair, turn at whatever bank will miss and release back pressure on the stick to unload the wing and use the vertical space available. He is not going to dive on you. Steep turn and descent is fine.
If you happen to work low all day, give way to all other aircraft rather than climb up into traffic.
Helicopter, Ag, and even STOL should work away from normal pattern as much as practicable.
Listen to the small voice in your head. Uncontrolled means advice given but the only rule is see and avoid. Even if there were more rules, legally dead is not good. Uncontrolled is like a football game with no officials. Cooperate and graduate.

What have I missed?

Biggest thing I see is people not communicating.

5 people who just announce what they are doing is pointless, mom always said there is a reason you have two ears and one mouth.

“Cessna on downwind, this is the piper on a 6 mile final on the practice RNAV, I’ll be at the threshold in 2 min, can you make it or should I do a 360 for you?”

Communicate and cooperate. And go ahead and do the 360 for the guy without a radio?

Actually, the first thing we ALL need to do is disabuse ourselves of the notion that we are each the Center of the Universe.

Then look out the window, then talk on the radio, etc.

Far too many of these incidents relate to a participant being totally focused on themself. Unfortunately, we seem to have raised a generation of same.

MTV

contactflying wrote:Communicate and cooperate. And go ahead and do the 360 for the guy without a radio?

So in my experience the guys without the radios more often than not are the most cautious, as they know they don’t have a radio and will have no audio warning of anyone else

Also as time goes on I see less and less nordos, maybe it’s with the battery and radio tech advancements, the few people I know with no electric planes have a little handheld with the headset pigtail in a side pocket, which makes good sense shy of flying out of a strip no one else uses


The issue has been people with radios who announce but don’t communicate, as if their announcements are some type of voodoo spell that will keep everyone away from them

What you are missing is the "hot rod" with an attitude. They take off from which ever end is closest to their hanger, straight in approach from whichever direction they happen to be coming from and land very long if their hanger is at the far end, and don't say anything on the radio. If someone can come up with a way to fly safely around them, let's hear about it.

Dale Moul wrote:What you are missing is the "hot rod" with an attitude. They take off from which ever end is closest to their hanger, straight in approach from whichever direction they happen to be coming from and land very long if their hanger is at the far end, and don't say anything on the radio. If someone can come up with a way to fly safely around them, let's hear about it.

We’ll that’s me, minus the no comms part, not many working planes will do the full cross mid field, 45 to downwind deal, times money

But not using a radio when you have one is dumb, lots of the kerosine burners won’t even monitor CTAF till they go 1200 and change of freq which is often when they are damn near on the threshold, that’s a peeve of mine too, I’ll monitor a long ways out, make calls starting from me being about 10min out and coordinating with anyone else on freq, I mean I have multiple comms and can walk and chew gum, so why not.

Ag lands to the load and takes off from the load, but also gives way and uses the grass if possible. Communication, while good, can confuse pilots of normal operations when that communication is about non-standard operations. Here is a place where see and avoid is sometimes more helpful just by itself. As NineThreeKIlo says, the big airplane may not call unicom or tower until very near and may fuss to tower about TCAS. Tower may appropriately say, "He's fifty feet off the trees. He's not traffic." At uncontrolled, that would be me coming down my pipeline, at 200' AGL, that goes straight across or borders your airfield. I can see you and you probably didn't see me. I found early in that career that talking at uncontrolled airports startled too many pilots too dangerously. I mean some pilots come completely unglued without considering it is Ag or pipeline well distant and in avoidance of them. My Ag career was in airplanes that had to work close so mostly off airport refilling from a nurse rig. I understand that a 160 kt Air Tractor my be more of a problem. And we understand that we have to share. Moving out of low where we can see higher very well to high where we can see lower is awkward and perhaps more dangerous than staying down. Perhaps the entire GA community should be briefed on non-standard operations that are counter to the AC but legal based on the see and avoid rule. And if pipeline comes up with normal traffic for takeoff and landing, he still has to see every foot of the pipeline right of way according to DOT. That is hard from a 1,000' traffic pattern. Uncontrolled means a fluid tactical situation that is difficult to standardize.

Actually, it's not that difficult to comply with the regulations and recommendations in most cases. Yes, it takes a couple more minutes, but.... We had an instructor who was using right traffic at an airport specified for left traffic (with a student aboard) because "there was nobody around and we'd have had to overfly the airport, then fly a left downwind.

I pointed out that both of them were in the process of building time to get a flying job, so why worry about a couple minutes of flying?

Second, what if the ag pilot who worked in the area who happened to be deaf, was coming in to land....he'd be expecting left traffic.....

After the student left, that CFI got a real chewing out. He was a know it all, whose defense was "Left traffic is not required in the regulations". I suggested he take his CFI certificate to our FSDO and tell them that.

Mostly, it's lazy pilots who don't care about anyone but themselves, and like most dumb shits, they don't realize that what they're doing could kill THEM.....and others.

MTV

Why didn't/don't the FAA make the recommendations you mentioned a rule, Mike? I appreciate you pilots who are practically perfect (not a slam but a fact), but I am not. If disorganization would disqualify a pilot or CFII, I would never have been. We are all out there Mike. Some more precise than others. I can't make myself make a downwind base with a 40 knot wind behind me and no other airplane in the pattern. I know I shouldn't have been there, but my job required it. And no one was there except me. I have said I would feel safer flying with you than with myself, and I mean it. My point in all this is to make our fellow pilots I am out there too. I give way a lot and try to be as safe as possible and I don't feel safe being first, but I am not arbitrarily standardized. Nor do I teach Ag and pipeline pilots that way. Some of the stuff I do and teach has actually worked out in my experience.

Mike, we both present our case aggressively. While our approach differs, we both care about our students and fellow pilots. I thank you for that.

Strict traffic pattern and go around if something happens, the school solution, would have passed the student at Watsonville. It was not sufficient for survival in an uncontrolled world, however. Eventually he would have had enough incidents and even accidents to know reality and human behavior. Nay, we older pilots and instructors with experience have a moral obligation to let young students in on this reality. What should be done is not always done nor is it always practicable. In the even more dangerous ground travel world, we are taught defensive driving.

There will likely be only four holes in the Swiss cheese probable cause: failure to see and avoid, 340 was too fast, don't turn base in front of a faster plane on final, and go around was deadly. The fifth hole, too often left out to look good, is lack of effective training in real world scenarios. What should be done is not always done nor is it always practicable.

mtv wrote:Actually, it's not that difficult to comply with the regulations and recommendations in most cases. Yes, it takes a couple more minutes, but.... We had an instructor who was using right traffic at an airport specified for left traffic (with a student aboard) because "there was nobody around and we'd have had to overfly the airport, then fly a left downwind.

I pointed out that both of them were in the process of building time to get a flying job, so why worry about a couple minutes of flying?

Second, what if the ag pilot who worked in the area who happened to be deaf, was coming in to land....he'd be expecting left traffic.....

After the student left, that CFI got a real chewing out. He was a know it all, whose defense was "Left traffic is not required in the regulations". I suggested he take his CFI certificate to our FSDO and tell them that.

Mostly, it's lazy pilots who don't care about anyone but themselves, and like most dumb shits, they don't realize that what they're doing could kill THEM.....and others.

MTV

We’ll if AG pilot was deaf he shouldn’t have a medical, not even basic med

For the pattern the only regulatory part is the direction, patterns are always left unless depicted right (RP on the sectional) the FAA has gone after people before flying wrong way patterns at uncontrolled fields, now entry and pattern altitude are not regulated

Thinking kerosine burners are going to enter the pattern like a 172 looking to get a burger straight after a WINGS course is fantasy land stuff, they don’t need to and it’s silly, for them it’s just simple communications and planning, pump the brakes a little or add a little more cow bell

The really helpful change over the years has been the lights. Big and fast also has strong landing lights now that can be seen in the daytime with full sun. If the runway is long, student expectation should be that big and fast is on long final. And the student daisy chain that deterred me in my 172 should deter big and fast. Parallel runways are nice when far enough apart to separate traffic. See and avoid is still the only safe rule or advice.

I know a couple of pilots that are deaf. Medical exemptions for that. They also have limitations on their pilot certificate, ie "no tower ops", etc.
I also flew with a Twin Otter guy that only had one eye.

contactflying wrote:Why didn't/don't the FAA make the recommendations you mentioned a rule, Mike? I appreciate you pilots who are practically perfect (not a slam but a fact), but I am not. If disorganization would disqualify a pilot or CFII, I would never have been. We are all out there Mike. Some more precise than others. I can't make myself make a downwind base with a 40 knot wind behind me and no other airplane in the pattern. I know I shouldn't have been there, but my job required it. And no one was there except me. I have said I would feel safer flying with you than with myself, and I mean it. My point in all this is to make our fellow pilots I am out there too. I give way a lot and try to be as safe as possible and I don't feel safe being first, but I am not arbitrarily standardized. Nor do I teach Ag and pipeline pilots that way. Some of the stuff I do and teach has actually worked out in my experience.

Mike, we both present our case aggressively. While our approach differs, we both care about our students and fellow pilots. I thank you for that.

Jim,

I was describing left traffic, which, unless otherwise specified for a particular runway, IS a regulation, not a suggestion.

Clearly there are cases where a full on traffic pattern is not required by regulation. But, what you call the “school solution” is in fact what is specified by the FAA as “good operating procedure” at uncontrolled fields. What THAT means is deviate at your own peril. If anything bad happens, guess who gets blamed?

Do I deviate from that procedure? Occasionally, yes. Im not afraid to fly a straight in at a totally quiet airport, and always do from an instrument approach…..totally legal.

But, we had a near mid air at a backcountry strip recently because someone was flying a straight in at an airport where that is strongly discouraged. Another pilot on base came close to meeting the straight in.

Your example of a pipeline pilot flying through an airport area has nothing to do with the regulations or the FAA recomendations, because the pipeline pilot isn’t LANDING there. In fact, every pipeline pilot I’ve been around makes a LOT of calls on CTAF and I have no doubt is looking around for traffic.

But that’s an even better reason for the rest of us to fly predictable approaches at uncontrolled airports.

MTV

The FAA has been mostly wise with airspace control. B wants to separate mostly IFR with good means to do that. B gives the little guy good workable airspace below the layers of the upside down cake. ATC wants no part of uncontrolled for the very reason that it can't be controlled without controllers, so ATC makes it tower or FAA advises it as uncontrolled. C is more problematic because it wants to get enough calls and radar targets to become B. So it requires calls and radar contact, which makes it less workable for the little guy than B. It will help low altitude operators when the GPS identification is required because they will not have to climb to become a radar target nor should they have to talk.

So the government is doing a pretty good job. The ATC system, save C, is working well. We have to do our part, as Mike says, to make the uncontrolled system work better. Believing and teaching that we are controlling the uncontrolled is neither realistic nor safe, however.

Thanks Mike. I will start going easier on instructors about wind management. Yes, I will still teach it and use it. I will go with the teardrop base to final to drift across the centerline extended downwind enough to arrive at the proper angle across (new centerline extended) to set up touchdown on the downwind corner of the runway going toward the upwind big airplane touchdown zone mark. A little more awkward and a bit more skill required, but doable. And except for the crossing, it keeps us slower guys off the centerline extended as much as practicable. We cannot see and avoid what is behind us. We can avoid getting in front.

NineThreeKilo wrote:Biggest thing I see is people not communicating.

Negative.... EVERY pilot flying (at least every one I know) was learned to prioritize...

Aviate
Navigate
Communicate.

Your opinion is third on the list of how to stay alive. Fly the flipping thing First, and you might grow old. Looking outside is how we fly in the context that pertains to this forum.

Dale Moul wrote: What you are missing is the "hot rod" with an attitude. They take off from which ever end is closest to their hanger, straight in approach from whichever direction they happen to be coming from and land very long if their hanger is at the far end, and don't say anything on the radio. If someone can come up with a way to fly safely around them, let's hear about it.

Bzzzz on this one as well... There is quite literally a metric shit ton of such operations conducted safely and legally every day by professional pilots who are not only not hot shots, but are far safer, more current and better trained than the average $100 burger getter. Two quick examples that come to mind are the average jump pilot / location, and the average ag pilot / location. The typical 'Hot Rod' I see when working in such a location, is a visitor or perhaps 300 hour wonder CFI unfamiliar with the area who arrives and forgets to do as Romans while he is in Rome... I call him the 'self absorbed' Hot Rod.

No one in their right mind will argue against radios or communication. but first you gotta fly the flipping thing... and then you have to navigate the flipping thing, which may mean giving way, even if the legal right of way was yours. The fact that the 340 should have broke off doesn't make the student any more alive. 'Right of way' is worth the paper you read it on, assume it at your own peril. Saying the 340 should have broke off with a 'nuff said' attitude is absolutely pointless.

NineThreeKilo wrote: We’ll if AG pilot was deaf he shouldn’t have a medical, not even basic med

Your opinion, and while technically incorrect, I guess it's your right to have it. I believe I know the Ag pilot Mike had in mind when he wrote that, he is infinitely more professional and experienced than the average Joe, and he is not the only one out there.

NineThreeKilo wrote: Thinking kerosine burners are going to enter the pattern like a 172 looking to get a burger straight after a WINGS course is fantasy land stuff, they don’t need to and it’s silly, for them it’s just simple communications and planning, pump the brakes a little or add a little more cow bell

Agreed.... and as I mentioned before there are many others who are legally, not going to enter a pattern in an anticipated fashion, and there are even those who are legal to deviate from an established pattern. Assuming the 'right way' is the only way things are going to happen when you arrive is tantamount to assuming the right of way.

The only time I see a problem with emphasis on good communication is when it takes precedent over good flying. What about the guy who has a radio, but has mis selected the freq, the guy who has a radio that just developed a faulty mic, the guy who has a radio but has an accent that is coon ass, the guy that has a radio, but is just an ass....

Are you willing to die for their short comings? I'm not even willing to be disappointed by them Want to land straight in and ahead of my approach which happens to be in the opposite direction? have at it... I will land 45 seconds after you and won't think twice about it.
Are you going to get pissy because you just woke up to the fact that the wig wag lights heading down the runway in the same direction you have established your down wind on are mine? sorry pal, but I will be turning out and well into my work before you even realize how much we weren't in conflict... maybe a little less coffee is in order for you.

Want to enjoy a long life of flying? Excel at flying the flipping thing..... We can talk all we want while we're doing that...

Take care, Rob

mtv wrote:............I was describing left traffic, which, unless otherwise specified for a particular runway,
IS a regulation, not a suggestion. ....

FAR 91.126(b)(1)