Aero-Tips!

A good pilot is always learning -- how many times have you heard this old standard throughout your flying career? There is no truer statement in all of flying (well, with the possible exception of "there are no old, bold pilots.")

Aero-News has called upon the expertise of Thomas P. Turner, master CFI and all-around-good-guy, to bring our readers -- and us -- daily tips to improve our skills as aviators. Some of them, you may have heard before... but for each of us, there will also be something we might never have considered before, or something that didn't "stick" the way it should have the first time we memorized it for the practical test.

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Aero-Tips 09.27.06

I took my initial pilot training through solo in a US Air Force T-41A, a pretty much off-the-shelf 1965 Cessna 172 in Stars and Bars paint.  Because I was in the Air Force's Flight Screen Program at Officer Training School ("FSPOT", pronounced "Fishpot") some of the procedures were a little different than perhaps you'd see in civilian flying schools. One procedure we Fishpots were taught was that, during a go-around or any time on an upwind leg we should not fly directly over the runway, but displaced slightly to the right. This was to prevent a conflict with another airplane that might be climbing off the runway -- perhaps what instigated our go-around in the first place.

Somewhere along the way as I completed civilian certificates and ratings, and spent some time in three separate Part 141 programs in the process, I got the "displaced upwind" trained out of me. By a few years later when, out of the Air Force and instructing at a small FBO in Missouri, I began to pass along what I was learning about flying, I did what just about everybody does on a go-around or the upwind leg -- I flew right over the runway. As a result the pilots I trained ended up doing the same.

Back to basics

Darned if, when reading through the Airplane Flying Handbook much later I didn't come across this passage, beginning on page 7-3:

The upwind leg is also the transitional part of the traffic pattern when on the final approach and a go-around is initiated and a climb attitude established. When a safe altitude is attained, the pilot should commence a shallow bank turn to the upwind side of the airport. This will allow better visibility of the runway for departing traffic.

My FSPOT training was to move to the right of directly above the runway, to keep any climbing traffic visible out the left (my) side of the T-41. The Airplane Flying Handbook modifies this recommendation a bit, calling for displacement to the upwind side -- an assumption, perhaps, that a climbing airplane might not remain precisely on centerline, but might blow downwind if the pilot is inattentive (or on an assigned "runway heading" for departure). Either way, the "displaced upwind to the upwind" seems the right thing to do -- so long as you don't displace so far to one side that you conflict with opposite-direction traffic on the downwind.

Aero-tip of the day: On an upwind leg and/or during a go-around, maneuver to keep any departing traffic in sight.

FMI: Aero-Tips