thevideographer
Well-Known Member
Hope technical is the right place for this...
Lets say you're flying in a busy traffic pattern in a class D or C and get a G1000 traffic alert. I don't mean a TCAS alert, just an ADS-B alert that another plane is close. How close do you get before taking evasive action? Do you assume that the tower knows what's going on or turn immediately, and possibly create an entirely new traffic problem?
The reason I ask is because in the pattern today another aircraft flying the opposite direction came mighty close to me while I was on downwind, all under the control of ATC. I was watching them get closer on the ADS-B screen (at my altitude), then out the window, and just as I was considering climbing back above pattern altitude the other aircraft turned off of the collision course.
Lets say you're flying in a busy traffic pattern in a class D or C and get a G1000 traffic alert. I don't mean a TCAS alert, just an ADS-B alert that another plane is close. How close do you get before taking evasive action? Do you assume that the tower knows what's going on or turn immediately, and possibly create an entirely new traffic problem?
The reason I ask is because in the pattern today another aircraft flying the opposite direction came mighty close to me while I was on downwind, all under the control of ATC. I was watching them get closer on the ADS-B screen (at my altitude), then out the window, and just as I was considering climbing back above pattern altitude the other aircraft turned off of the collision course.
) last week. Shot a section PAR (so we were on a discrete PAR freq), lead kicked me off a little too late to get proper separation, ended up having one of the scarier wake turbulence moments of my life, lit the blowers and went around with a pale face. Told the PAR controller I was going around and switched up tower, who seemed to be completely unaware that I had gone around, and they cleared me to land. This should have been my first clue that they weren't communicating with the PAR controllers. I read back my clearance, and start my approach turn. Just as I'm making my turn to final, I see out of the corner of my eyes some landing lights that should never have been in the corner of my eyes. Once again I light the blowers, go around, and tower finally catches it and starts yelling for me to go around. It turned out that the traffic had also been up a separate PAR freq, which is why I never heard them, and I hadn't been obeying the golden rule of always looking long before turning base/final. There were a few lessons to be learned from that one, but the biggest one was my own trust that tower wouldn't let something like that happen. I've seen stupid stuff like that plenty of times before, but I guess I had just gotten complacent. Long story short, don't trust ATC not to kill you, and if your systems are indicating that they are trying to, I'd be inclined to believe it. I'm not saying that TCAS will help you here, but it can at least serve as a head's up that something isn't right. Eyeballs should always be on a constant lookout anywhere near an airport, and in my case, certainly should have been out anywhere near one of the busiest mil bases in the country.
