2 aircraft down in Marana AZ

Absolutely. Lancair and 172. The place is a zoo with fixed wing here, as are all the airports around here with flight schools. When I’m operating out of AVQ here, I’ll always use the perpendicular runway from everyone else, generally 3/21, as everyone else is on 12/30; and I just remain west of taxiway A at all times if on 3, and east of 12/30 at all times if on 21.
 
I was shortly out of indoc at the pilot mill, one of my colleagues was also finishing indoc and was sat down by management for refusing to enter the AVQ pattern with a student due to 6 others already present and several not talking. They fired him on the spot. Definitely accelerated my journey out the door.

ADS-B looks like upwind collision after a touch and go from the 172, they came back around and landed on the perpendicular. High wing climbing with low wing above…
 
AZ was crazy in the 1980’s. I couldn’t imagine what it’s like now, being that I haven’t flown GA for a long time.
 
ahw01 said:
Think I’m going to Indiana if I need to timebuild for the new job… sounds like AZ is crazier than 10 years ago
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Absolutely it is. There are maybe 8 or so different flight school callsigns all over the place here, all out of the metro valley. They are all over the place between the south practice area and south of Tucson, including Gila bend and Coolidge for east and west. Even the area I go into west Phoenix low level, the middle of nowhere area in between the west end of South Mountain and the north end of the Estrellas, on the west side of the Gila River rez by the west 202 Loop/51st Ave, is jammed with Varney/UAL Aviate planes coming through there low level trying to stay below the B shelf.
 
What drives me crazy, is when I’m deliberately using Runway 3 there at AVQ, even with undesirable winds for me, just to stay out of the way of the fixed wing who use the longer 12/30; and some plane shows up and proceeds to join me in the 3 pattern, when all im trying to do is to avoid the fixed wing flow. “Seems like 3 is the active runway,” they will ask. There is no active runway, use whatever you like. It’s uncontrolled. I’m trying to stay out of YOUR way. Lol
 
schloopy said:
I was shortly out of indoc at the pilot mill, one of my colleagues was also finishing indoc and was sat down by management for refusing to enter the AVQ pattern with a student due to 6 others already present and several not talking. They fired him on the spot. Definitely accelerated my journey out the door.

ADS-B looks like upwind collision after a touch and go from the 172, they came back around and landed on the perpendicular. High wing climbing with low wing above…
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Someone on Reddit witnessed it and that seems to be the way it happened. The Cessna went for a go around and the Lancair was just too close to him, while immediately behind him in the pattern, going for his own go around and they touched.

The owner of the Lancair seems to be a pretty well accomplished engineer for NASA.
 
MikeD said:
Absolutely it is. There are maybe 8 or so different flight school callsigns all over the place here, all out of the metro valley. They are all over the place between the south practice area and south of Tucson, including Gila bend and Coolidge for east and west. Even the area I go into west Phoenix low level, the middle of nowhere area in between the west end of South Mountain and the north end of the Estrellas, on the west side of the Gila River rez by the west 202 Loop/51st Ave, is jammed with Varney/UAL Aviate planes coming through there low level trying to stay below the B shelf.
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Old Westwind = new Varney?
 
pwttogfk said:
Was based there for a few years. Honestly can’t believe it took this long. Training, military ops, snowbird pilots…it needed a tower long ago.
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It may seem elementary to ask it this way, but if your field has that much traffic - Regardless of the traffic being flight school or not - Could there be a safe threshold for the number TKOF/LDGs to reach before putting in a must-have request for a tower?
 
Yeeeeeeeeeeeah, but you have to staff it.

And if there are restrictions, it’s going to push that traffic elsewhere to areas without restrictions or a tower.

How many times, as a CFI, have we taken our student to some quiet airport to practice touch and goes, only to find it to be a beehive of activity? Plus, there are so many pilots who are ‘heads down’ looking at that sweet sweet G1000 when they should be heads-out looking for airplanes and dividing their attention.

Evidentiary Materials: All the “let me film myself flying” influencers on IG.
 
derg said:
Yeeeeeeeeeeeah, but you have to staff it.

And if there are restrictions, it’s going to push that traffic elsewhere to areas without restrictions or a tower.

How many times, as a CFI, have we taken our student to some quiet airport to practice touch and goes, only to find it to be a beehive of activity? Plus, there are so many pilots who are ‘heads down’ looking at that sweet sweet G1000 when they should be heads-out looking for airplanes and dividing their attention.

Evidentiary Materials: All the “let me film myself flying” influencers on IG.
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Don’t forget the CGZ “stack”
 
ahw01 said:
Don’t forget the CGZ “stack”
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That cluster**** needs to go away. CFIs cosplaying ATC is a disaster. My first time in there I was doing a company checkride (way easier under IFR than VFR thanks to their ops manual) and had no idea the local flight schools treated that ILS as their personal property. I remember something to the effect of “change to advisory, good luck” from ATC before being chewed out on CTAF for “cutting in line” and when I told them I was IFR being told “you can’t do this approach IFR.”
 
pwttogfk said:
That cluster**** needs to go away. CFIs cosplaying ATC is a disaster. My first time in there I was doing a company checkride (way easier under IFR than VFR thanks to their ops manual) and had no idea the local flight schools treated that ILS as their personal property. I remember something to the effect of “change to advisory, good luck” from ATC before being chewed out on CTAF for “cutting in line” and when I told them I was IFR being told “you can’t do this approach IFR.”
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IFR ALWAYS has priority on the approaches at CGZ, over any of the VFR clownery of the stack. Always. Even when I’m in the stack with pilot number 50 who’s trying to kill me, and someone calls inbound IFR for an approach….even if it’s a training school plane…..I do everything I can to be as accommodating as I can and not be in the way. Simple professionalism and courtesy, go a long way. Plus, I’m representing my callsign on the radio.
 
Burrito said:
It may seem elementary to ask it this way, but if your field has that much traffic - Regardless of the traffic being flight school or not - Could there be a safe threshold for the number TKOF/LDGs to reach before putting in a must-have request for a tower?
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derg said:
Yeeeeeeeeeeeah, but you have to staff it.

And if there are restrictions, it’s going to push that traffic elsewhere to areas without restrictions or a tower.

How many times, as a CFI, have we taken our student to some quiet airport to practice touch and goes, only to find it to be a beehive of activity? Plus, there are so many pilots who are ‘heads down’ looking at that sweet sweet G1000 when they should be heads-out looking for airplanes and dividing their attention.

Evidentiary Materials: All the “let me film myself flying” influencers on IG.
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There have been a few proposals for a tower at AVQ, but they’ve never passed. Look at RYN. Slow airport that not much really go on, and it’s had the opposite problem……has a tower that it really doesn’t need, at all. And it can’t get closed. 😆
 
My biggest “oh ****” moment at AVQ was when I hit 70 kts on the takeoff roll, TCAS came out of ground inhibit, and the PFD turned into a yellow blob of nope right around V1. Sucked the gear up and played dodgeball with the quasi-military jump plane that was apparently doing a low altitude circling approach against the flow of pattern traffic without saying anything on CTAF.
 
pwttogfk said:
My biggest “oh ****” moment at AVQ was when I hit 70 kts on the takeoff roll, TCAS came out of ground inhibit, and the PFD turned into a yellow blob of nope right around V1. Sucked the gear up and played dodgeball with the quasi-military jump plane that was apparently doing a low altitude circling approach against the flow of pattern traffic without saying anything on CTAF.
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That still happens to this day.
 
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