Out with the Rectangle; In with the Oval — new flight pattern

I could see this improving one of the most common GA accidents.. base to final stall/spin accidents. A constant radius turn might prevent someone who overshoots final from a large bank angle (often uncoordinated), low energy turn right above the ground. Rather, small deliberate corrections throughout a constant radius turn at a shallower bank angle.

Just spitballing though.
 
mshunter said:
I'm don't care. Just don't hit me when your flying your rounded off rectangle pattern.
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I prefer thinking of the normal way as a SQUARED CIRCLE!



I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I've ended up where I needed to be.


- Douglas Adams
 
I use the "Half way down, half way around" technique. Works for ovals , rectangles and other geometric shapes.
 
Roger Roger said:
You mean just like how many of us fly it anyway? Typical flight instruction overthinking imho.
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It's amazing what aviation college professors will come up with to overcomplicate what should be very simple.


If everyone in the real world wasn't already making an oval pattern, "square your base to final" would be redundant. Meanwhile, guys who have spent their whole careers in flight training have discovered what the rest of us have been doing all along.
 
USMCmech said:
It's amazing what aviation college professors will come up with to overcomplicate what should be very simple.


If everyone in the real world wasn't already making an oval pattern, "square your base to final" would be redundant. Meanwhile, guys who have spent their whole careers in flight training have discovered what the rest of us have been doing all along.
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Three letters for you: B. A. C.
 
Pretty much the military "closed" pattern; the overhead pattern without the initial break abeam the numbers.
 
Hacker15e said:
Pretty much the military "closed" pattern; the overhead pattern without the initial break abeam the numbers.
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And you'll still get guys extending downwind way past the perch, or offsetting the runway so far that a B-52 pilot says "damn.....that's one hell of a wide pattern!"

New PTS task: pattern breakout/reentry at the perch, and reasons for it.
 
How about what they do in Europe/South Africa, where you overfly the field at TPA+1000, descend on the deadside then overfly to join on a downwind.

Or parallel circuits where you fly the downwind inside another aircraft then turn base first...

Keep it simple...
 
CFI A&P said:
A continuous turn through base and final... Biplane pilots have been flying this way since at least 1944. Thanks Curtis!
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Many taildraggers where pilots sat behind big radials and needed the side-visibility to see the runway have had curvilinear final turns/finals since when those were first designed and built in the 20s/30s.

As you say, it remains the best way to get something like a Stearman on the runway from the downwind.
 
Hacker15e said:
Many taildraggers where pilots sat behind big radials and needed the side-visibility to see the runway have had curvilinear final turns/finals since when those were first designed and built in the 20s/30s.

As you say, it remains the best way to get something like a Stearman on the runway from the downwind.
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Indeed this is the way to go when flying anything with a high drag / poor visibility profile. Few people understand the blind spot incurred when doing a power on approach in a Stearman, WACO, Pitts, Great Lakes, AcroDuster, etc...


Sent from my Startac using Tapatalk.
 
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