tight patterns

[uavchaser]

It seems as if everyday I get stuck behind a c150 flying 747 patterns. Does anyone else have a problem with this. Are CFI's just trying to build extra flight time by teaching students to fly patterns improperly? I personally don't fly any wider than a 1/4-1/2 mile downwind in larger singles and light twins but that's just me. It's also hard to see these "c152 heavies" in the pattern since their downwind and base are in the next county. I know I'm not the only one. Fire away.

 

[HappyFlying]

I think touch and go landings have helped to encourage big patterns. Early in a students training the instructor uses the climbout and crosswind leg to discuss the landing instead of on the taxi back. A big pattern gives the student more time to get set up for the next step. Personally I think this teaches bad and possibly unsafe habits. I like to keep close enough to make the runway if my engine misbehaves.
I have an old 150 that I fly all the time into towered and uncontrolled fields. I fly a really tight pattern and that sometimes throws a curve to ATC. They associate a 150 with a student pilot and big patterns. I get sent on extended downwinds too often because of mistake in identity. But I also frequently fly the ILS faster than they expect a 150 to fly. They had to ask a Caravan to keep his speed up because there was faster Cessna traffic behind him on the ILS. He was probably poking along but I got a kick out of it. It's not like a 150 has trouble slowing down.

 

[Dignan]

It's been a while since I instructed, but I remember the wide patterns well (c'mon, at some point it stops being a pattern and becomes an orbit, right?). Anyway, my advice would be to live with it and work around it. I try not to tell other people how to fly--if its blatantly dangerous, yes, but not just because I don't agree with something they're doing. Otherwise, the debate usually devolves quickly into butting heads and ends with noses bent out of shape (which can make a small training airport even smaller). If you're instructing, use it to show the student how every other pilot's flying might not be "convenient" to what they want to do, and it will take piloting skills (slow flight, etc) to work around it. As always, just my opinion. Take it easy.

D

 

[katanabob]

I usually take my students to little out-of-the-way crop duster stips and other errant grass fields for landing practice. We get the benefit of our own airfield and can concentrate on landings, not on avoiding the terrors in the pattern.
I have noticed that at our airport, on several occasions I have seen CHALLENGER (kudos to the standards guys at flexjet, by the way) make a tighter pattern than the 152's from the FBO.

 

[El Cid Av8or]

What gets me is those that fly a tear-drop pattern when every other aircraft is flying a squared pattern. Yes, it's legal and OK to do but when you're one out of 20 in the pattern and the majority of the other 19 are students, it gets really interesting.

 

[flywithastick]

Aside from the B-52 patterns, what gets me is all that gyrating garbage of passing over the field and making a decending 225° turn to make the 45° d-wind entry. Last night I was working with a guy making T&G's and here they came. The 2-hr training block must have been up. 3 of 4 planes passed over midfield and did the goofy teardrop turn back to downwind. *each* one managed to conflict with us on downwind & crosswind. One would have collided with us had we not decended 200' when turning x-wind to d-wind. We called and asked if he saw the traffic in the pattern crosswing to downwind. "Uhh... no." Whats' the point of all this if you aren't looking for a plane with strobes, landing light and navs on? Were's the added safety?! There's none. Just OPEN YOUR EYES & make the d@mn midfield crosswind entry into the pattern! Thanks for asking! I feel much better now...

 

[bobbysamd]

Patterns

I never understood why patterns would get wider and wider with more aircraft in the pattern.

I always taught that for slower aircraft the best downwind was something like a half-mile to a a mile max. In low-wing, visualize the wing tip tracking the centerline; in a 172, the centerline bisecting the strut. Of course, the safety issues of flying a tight pattern are obvious.

I guess the only thing you can do is live with it. Maybe, pattern flying would be a good subject for discussion at a WINGS seminar or something.

 

[TWA Dude]

Re: Patterns

Where I learned to fly we sometimes had up to 12 planes in the pattern. Tower ordered extended upwinds and downwinds, 360s, 270s to final, short approachs, go-arounds, the whole schmear. It was terrifiying at first but without a doubt I learned how to fly in a crowded pattern. I subsequently instructed at an uncontrolled field where we usually had the place to ourselves. Once in a while a 152 Heavy would show up and a drastically decrease the number of landings my student could accomplish. I blame the CFI and not the student. One CFI I talked to was apologetic but he blamed the student. Hogwash! If you teach a tight pattern as close to the beginning of training as possible then any student can handle it. I found that in most cases students benefitted from more landings and less critiquing while airborn.

 

[katanabob]

Another option that noone seems to understand is flying an upwind leg, THEN entering on a crosswind/midfield/whereever is best for spacing. What a concept; it lets you survey the entire traffic pattern, make yourself seen to the other traffic, and insert yourself into the appropriate spot without doing that stupid teardrop.
The Australian AIM has a SUPERB section on pattern entries.

 

[Vik]

One of the FBOs at the airport I fly out of teach very wide patterns. I think the reason is because they want the students to clock more hobbs time for obvious reasons. Everyone there does it .. CFIs, students, student solos.


At my school, we teach 1/2mi. The airport is busy enough that we often have to extended downwind and if we pass the 30 degree point past abeam the numbers, we begin a very small climb to make sure we can make it back to the airport.

Anyhow, one of these days someone is going to lose an engine on downwind and are going to have to face the very embarrassing fact that they couldn't make it back to the field.