B208 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 21, 2019 2:34 pm
All this talk about radio calls....
Radios don’t prevent collisions, your fucking eyeballs prevent collisions; so use them.
If only you knew how many planes you’ve got really close to and never even saw.
Son, if someone needs a radio call to prompt them to start looking for traffic, they are a bad pilot.
I don’t know if I’ve ever come close to hitting someone that I never saw,( I did @#$! up horribly once during fighting wing and got a real close view of lead going by me opposite direction), but if I have, the radio would not have made any real difference.
Radios tell you where to concentrate your traffic scan. If I know there's traffic approaching from the right, I'm going to focus my scan on the right.
When Center says "traffic, 10 o'clock, 8 miles, 1000' below", do you focus on the left? Or do you completely ignore the information and continue scanning everywhere with equal attention?
Radios tell you where to concentrate your traffic scan. If I know there's traffic approaching from the right, I'm going to focus my scan on the right.
Well I'm going to focus my scan to the left. I already know about the guy on the right.
When Center says "traffic, 10 o'clock, 8 miles, 1000' below", do you focus on the left? Or do you completely ignore the information and continue scanning everywhere with equal attention?
I will continue scanning everywhere with equal attention. This guy is still a tiny speck 8 miles away and in any event a thousand feet below. Remember it's not the one you know about that's going to get you.
---------- ADS -----------
DId you hear the one about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.
If you don't look for the conflicting airplane, how do you visually avoid it? "Yep, he's right over there, just about to smack into my plane, but I'm looking the other way..."
The problem is that looking for traffic takes discipline and effort. Looking out the windscreen isn't good enough. You have to move your head forward and look to the left and right, and to be sure of detecting traffic you need to do that at least once every 10 seconds. I admit I don't generally do that unless I'm in congested airspace.
A few days ago I had a traffic alert from FSS. She was telling both me and the other aircraft that we were both at 12 oclock 3 miles, 12 oclock 2 miles, 12 oclock 1 mile. By 3 miles we couldn't see each other and we maintained 500 feet vertical separation. It was only after the 1 mile callout that I see the other aircraft coming from my 2 oclock position 500 feet above. This isn't the first time this has happened...FSS is very unreliable about position reports, and I really need to learn not to entirely trust them. (Wind wasn't a factor...our tracks were about 30 degrees offset from each other).
Use something prominent on the chart to base your position report off, not "I'm over the big oak tree heading between Fred's farm and the old coal mill"
goingnowherefast wrote: ↑Wed Apr 24, 2019 8:43 am
If you don't look for the conflicting airplane, how do you visually avoid it? "Yep, he's right over there, just about to smack into my plane, but I'm looking the other way..."
Nobody has a midair with traffic that's pointed out to them "8 miles 10 o'clock, 1000 below." Not unless your aircraft is 8 miles long and a thousand feet tall. For now, I don't really give a toss if I see that traffic or not, and I'm not going to waste a second looking for it at the expense of looking for someone much closer not pointed out to me who is an immediate risk.
Midair collisions occur during manoeuvreing flight, often high-wing to low-wing, or otherwise in a blind spot. Keep lifting those wings, lean forward and look around the A pillars, look up, look down. And look properly before you turn.
---------- ADS -----------
DId you hear the one about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.
All I know is it can be very hard to spot traffic, even when it's relatively close, you know exactly where it is, and it is repeatedly pointed out to you by ATC. That's why I don't think a good lookout is enough to spot traffic (early enough to avoid it) in every conceivable configuration 100% of the time.
So I'll use every tool I can; I'll make good position reports and listen to others' reports, and I'll pick up flight following when available. I'll spend most of my energy looking for the potentially conflicting traffic that I know is out there, not for the unknown aircraft that may or may not exist. An aircraft that is 1,000 ft below me now, might be at my altitude when we meet in 4 miles.
I don't understand the hate for radios from some people, if you're that bothered then shut it off and go home. If you're not going to bother to pay attention to traffic information, you are the problem.
And guess what radio haters, we still make calls in the middle of nowhere, especially when there might be a chance of a survey plane or other helicopter in the area, even if we know that the nearest aircraft SHOULD be a good 25 miles away. Overkill? yes. having an increased situational awareness is worth it.
Heliian wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2019 4:14 am
I don't understand the hate for radios from some people, if you're that bothered then shut it off and go home. If you're not going to bother to pay attention to traffic information, you are the problem.
And guess what radio haters, we still make calls in the middle of nowhere, especially when there might be a chance of a survey plane or other helicopter in the area, even if we know that the nearest aircraft SHOULD be a good 25 miles away. Overkill? yes. having an increased situational awareness is worth it.
Herein lay the problem. Everyone assumes that just because you don’t have absolute faith in your radios for collision avoidance you are a radio hater. I don’t hate radios, I don’t feel one way other the other about them.
The whole radio discussion got started because someone speculated that improper radio work caused this collision. They are wrong. Improper look out caused this collision. Somebody let their discipline in the maintaining a look out slip and now somebody is dead. The ultimate lesson is look out the window or you will wind up dead. All the verbal diarrhea in the world won’t save your ass if don’t put your eyeballs in the right place.
I was flying out in the middle of nowhere once and figured no one was around, i decided to make a call anyway and it turned out there was a helicopter in the area, he responded and said he thought the same thing, that there would be no one else around. I would have never saw him by having a good lookout on its own. Like another poster said, the radio made us both look in the right direction.
B208 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2019 7:53 am
The whole radio discussion got started because someone speculated that improper radio work caused this collision. They are wrong. Improper look out caused this collision. Somebody let their discipline in the maintaining a look out slip and now somebody is dead.
You need to be fair here. Not "somebody" let their discipline slip, both pilots did. If they were both in the circuit and they came together, then neither pilot saw the other. If just one of them had the other in site, evasive action could have been taken.
Also, to dwell on my opinion of using radios, if they were both on the frequency communicating with each other then they would have at least known that there was more than just themselves in the circuit and where exactly their conflicting traffic was.
No one has mentioned this so I figured I'd toss it in for info.
Many years ago, one of my students was an ophthalmologist. He told me that one of the reasons it can be hard to spot another aircraft is because when we move our eyes from something inside the cockpit to the outside, often there is nothing defined in that outside view for our eyes to focus upon. When that happens, the eye's focal length tends to remain where it last was, such as the distance to the instruments in front of us. At that focal length, another aircraft has to be very close to be seen. In time, the eye will begin to extend focal length in an effort to find something solid but that can take precious seconds we may not have. He suggested that the best fix for this was to look down to the ground to find something solid to focus on, which works great in VMC but not so great in between layers of stratus cloud.
B208 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2019 7:53 am
The whole radio discussion got started because someone speculated that improper radio work caused this collision. They are wrong. Improper look out caused this collision. Somebody let their discipline in the maintaining a look out slip and now somebody is dead.
You need to be fair here. Not "somebody" let their discipline slip, both pilots did. If they were both in the circuit and they came together, then neither pilot saw the other. If just one of them had the other in site, evasive action could have been taken.
Also, to dwell on my opinion of using radios, if they were both on the frequency communicating with each other then they would have at least known that there was more than just themselves in the circuit and where exactly their conflicting traffic was.
A low wing aircraft that operates in the 120 kt range of speed collides with a high wing wing aircraft that operates in the 90 kt range. Both aircraft are on the downwind, the low wing aircraft has severe damage to the under carriage and the high wing aircraft lost its wing. Odds are only one person’s lookout was faulty.
Odds are also that they were both on the AFT and that radios didn’t save their assess.
B208 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2019 7:53 am
The whole radio discussion got started because someone speculated that improper radio work caused this collision. They are wrong. Improper look out caused this collision. Somebody let their discipline in the maintaining a look out slip and now somebody is dead.
You need to be fair here. Not "somebody" let their discipline slip, both pilots did. If they were both in the circuit and they came together, then neither pilot saw the other. If just one of them had the other in site, evasive action could have been taken.
Also, to dwell on my opinion of using radios, if they were both on the frequency communicating with each other then they would have at least known that there was more than just themselves in the circuit and where exactly their conflicting traffic was.
A low wing aircraft that operates in the 120 kt range of speed collides with a high wing wing aircraft that operates in the 90 kt range. Both aircraft are on the downwind, the low wing aircraft has severe damage to the under carriage and the high wing aircraft lost its wing. Odds are only one person’s lookout was faulty.
Odds are also that they were both on the AFT and that radios didn’t save their assess.
How about we wait for the official report to come out. I say this only because I heard that it happened differently from what you heard.
You need to be fair here. Not "somebody" let their discipline slip, both pilots did. If they were both in the circuit and they came together, then neither pilot saw the other. If just one of them had the other in site, evasive action could have been taken.
Also, to dwell on my opinion of using radios, if they were both on the frequency communicating with each other then they would have at least known that there was more than just themselves in the circuit and where exactly their conflicting traffic was.
A low wing aircraft that operates in the 120 kt range of speed collides with a high wing wing aircraft that operates in the 90 kt range. Both aircraft are on the downwind, the low wing aircraft has severe damage to the under carriage and the high wing aircraft lost its wing. Odds are only one person’s lookout was faulty.
Odds are also that they were both on the AFT and that radios didn’t save their assess.
How about we wait for the official report to come out. I say this only because I heard that it happened differently from what you heard.
Looks like TSB released the report. Blames it mostly on no radio calls coming from the Cessna. Also looking to mandate flight recorders in GA aircraft.
