Again -- both of you. Hypothetical situation:
You are not inside the traffic pattern but relatively near the airport to the northeast. I make my first position call and include the "ATPA" phrase. You conclude that your position is not a factor for my approach to the airport and make no call and continue on your manuevers. I enter the area and make my normal traffic pattern position calls but on short final a herd of elephants runs onto the runway and I have to go-around. This airport happens to have a company specific balked landing procedure that takes me outbound on a radial to the northeast to some intersection for a holding pattern, then back to the airport. My responsible radio call will be something like "On the balked, tracking radial 028 outbound" which may cue you in that I may be heading straight for your aircraft. You being a bright fellow would realize this and now decide maybe you need to tell me where you are. By the time you do so depending on your altitude and distance from the airport we already may be fairly close to each other and besides, there isn't much I can do to change course once established on the procedure. Also, perhaps there are other fellows less bright than you are who can not immediately put two and two together.
Had you reported your position, which you concluded wasn't a factor to me, I could have realized that in a go-around it would be a factor and then 1) expected you and 2) coordinated with you more quickly in the event of a balked landing, rather than have us both be surprised by the fact that there is an airplane coming straight at each other.
You're making the assumption here that the pilot entering the pattern is not making their own traffic reports. I personally go with the AIM recommended procedures, I try not to make up my own way of radio communication, but to each, his own. I also use the landing light, as recommended in the AIM, to which the owner of the aircraft has scolded me because they cost so much to replace, but that is a different story. I make my own traffic reports, as recommended in the AIM, whether no one has flown that day, and I'll be alone in the pattern, or if there are 10 aircraft in the pattern, I still say the exact same thing. When it comes to me avoiding other aircraft, I don't rely on my ears like so many of you advocate, I rely on my eyes. I do my part in following the recommended procedures, and should not be scolded for following the procedures. When it comes to avoiding other aircraft, has anyone else ever heard of "see and avoid". I realize sometimes other aircraft are hard to see, and I do use my ears to help me out, but they are a secondary means, not a primary means. I believe Steve pointed this out, that even though I won't respond to your "all traffic, report position", you will still hear me, within one minute, making a standard position call on the radio, as recommended in the AIM. Also, what makes you think that if a pilot, with a radio, is not making his reports, even has his radio on...if he is negligent (I hope I spelled that right) to not follow AIM recommended procedures, what makes you think he even has his radio on, and on the CTAF. And I do also look at whether you even need to know about me. IF you call 20 miles out, and ask for everyone else to report, how much good will it do for me to say I'm 2 miles north about to enter downwind, 15 seconds later "XXX traffic, cessna 12345 turning downwind runway 5, XXX". All I did there was add one extra transmission to the frequency that you would have heard 15 seconds later anyway. All of this is why I choose to follow the recommended procedures in the AIM, and not make up my own. At the same time, I will reply if an aircraft has a specific querry to me, like if they still cannot see me after I make my own position report, or something like that, but I will not reply to a blanket announcement.
Whoever responded that GA should go away and have user fees, apparently is stupid enough that they want aviation to go away. How will we get new pilot, and the next generation of airline pilots with user fees. As you suggest, GA would pretty much go away. How will people learn to fly then? Maybe we will just have people jump right into the 737 sims and learn to fly that way then, since no one will be able to afford to fly GA anymore
This next point is just a pet peeve of mine, and that is people that say "inbound for a 45 downwind". I much prefer to say "Inbound for a standard entry to downwind" I was flying with a friend once, who is a pilot, and I said my standard entry line, and he said to me "what is a standard entry, how do other pilots know what a standard entry is". I told him he might want to look in the AIM and then get back to me. I standard entry is a 45 degree entree, and I do my best to make it as close to 45 degrees as possible, even though some guys go with 30, 60, 90, I even saw someone once cut me off in the pattern making a 135 degree turn to downwind, and never made a radio call at all. It did upset me, but technically he can do it, since it is an uncontrolled field, since I wasn't lower than him at the time. A lot of people also do not realize, even though I do not do this myself, the only thing regulatory about a traffic pattern is the direction of the turns, everything else is only AIM recomended. Anyway, this last paragraph was only a pet peeve of mine
