oldShar
Cleared for Takeoff
Unless someone breaks protocol, no one "takes" control.
Let someone break protocol and it's amazing how fast and how many jump on freq suddenly to jump on the provocateur.
Uncontrolled, OH NO we are all going to die!!!!!!
- Thread starter 1600vw
- Start date
Unless someone breaks protocol, no one "takes" control.
Let someone break protocol and it's amazing how fast and how many jump on freq suddenly to jump on the provocateur.
roncachamp
Final Approach
If no pilot "takes" control it's not "pilot controlled".
ChrisK
En-Route
Heck, KOSU seems busier than KCMH sometimes from the times I have visited each.
steingar
Taxi to Parking
Agreed. Add the complex runway layout (parallel and crossed runways) and the mix of traffic (everything from jets to trainers) and you're looking at a disaster. Like I said, I will be very surprised if this doesn't result in flaming wreckage.
The neighborhood surrounding KOSU has been trying to close the airport for decades. Flaming wreckage falling on someone might just do it. This is bad.
Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
Oh, oh.....is this like that 'if a tree falls in the forest...' question?
douglas393
Pattern Altitude
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2011
- Messages
- 1,981
- Display Name
Display name:
douglas
Most nonpilots I have spoke to are amazed that there are airports that do not have control towers. To the general public it seems that all airports have control towers, because their frame of reference is the big class B and class C airports. I sort of like the term "informally controlled airports", or even "unofficially controlled airports".
ebykowsky
Cleared for Takeoff
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2012
- Messages
- 1,405
- Display Name
Display name:
goalstop
But they're not informally or unofficially controlled. That sounds like some guy comes out every Saturday with a handheld and gives instructions to pilots as a hobby. I would say they are pilot moderated or uncontrolled, but not pilot controlled or informally controlled... I like the stop sign analogy. Nobody is controlling anything and people abide by the rules and look out for traffic just like at a stop sign. Consider the radio chatter as just part of looking for other traffic.
ebykowsky
Cleared for Takeoff
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2012
- Messages
- 1,405
- Display Name
Display name:
goalstop
Not quoting your quote here--just wondering how you could be from VA but never have flown there. Did you just move or something? I suppose a pm would have been smarter, but oh well. Sorry for being off topic.
roncachamp
Final Approach
No, as it's not a question.
douglas393
Pattern Altitude
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2011
- Messages
- 1,981
- Display Name
Display name:
douglas
I like the stop sign analogy as well and it works for me, but I would suspect if I used that on my wife, who is not a pilot she would be at a lost trying to figure out how plane stop in mid air(maybe yield signs would be better). Anyhow, what I sort of like about informally controlled or unofficially controlled is it takes away the connotation of uncontrolled because non towered airports are truly not uncontrolled but just controlled without a central controlling agency, and by saying informally or unofficially it connotates that the users are controlling it... maybe user controlled would be better. Then again I think we are trying to reinvent the wheel. The FAA is obviously happy with the term uncontrolled and that I guess is the official way of describing them.
ebykowsky
Cleared for Takeoff
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2012
- Messages
- 1,405
- Display Name
Display name:
goalstop
The good thing is that for many people, if you tell them it is perfectly safe to have no tower, they'll believe you. People trust pilots, which is why I wear student pilot epaulettes everywhere I go! 
Everskyward
Experimenter
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2005
- Messages
- 33,453
- Display Name
Display name:
Everskyward
But after their initial surprise do they really care?
douglas393
Pattern Altitude
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2011
- Messages
- 1,981
- Display Name
Display name:
douglas
No, the shock that I fly overwhelms them and then I get to clean up the floor.
Flew in there a couple of months ago to get fuel and a sandwich, it was so deserted, I figured the tower must be a training facility for the local college or something. I guess they have busier days as well.
Looks like they got the tower in 97, how did they ever make it through the 60s and 70s ?
Florida Cracker
Ejection Handle Pulled
- Joined
- May 4, 2009
- Messages
- 12,360
- Display Name
Display name:
Florida Cracker
Mostly, pilots behave in a reasonable manner. Often, when one behaves discourteously, or unsafely, other pilots let them know.
Behaving by the rules pretty much alleviates all the hassle. Towers popped up all over Florida, in the last 20 years, for no really good reason, other than airports got federal money to do something and felt bound to do something, so they did.
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
It also doesn't help that every movie ever made involving aviation, every field has a control tower. OK, maybe not every, but quite a bit. Remember the "control tower" in Con Air?
Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
I just moved here this past summer and while flying my airplane across country I had to leave it in TX for an engine teardown inspection as discussed in another thread. That said, you just reminded me to update my map since I got up in a rental a couple weeks ago.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
Dav8or
Final Approach
Glad you brought this analogy up. In the case of the stop sign, everyone knows the rules, even if they choose to totally ignore them. In the case of the non towered airfield, it gets a little fuzzier as is evident in all these threads. In the case of the stop sign, my 20+ years of living in Oakland taught me that a certain percentage of the population in a given community don't give a damn about the rules if they know no one is looking. People flying airplanes aren't any better.
If we're to lose all the Class D towers as some here seem to think is long over due, I say if we must, then make the standard AIM advice of entering the traffic pattern on a 45 and the pattern itself, a rule. Make it like the stop sign, where everybody is at least instructed what you're supposed to do and that there is liability as well as consequences if you are caught failing to live by those rules.
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
No. That is the worst method of entry. Never, ever turn your back to the pattern. I don't care if it is recommended by the Feds. I never put the airport in my blind spots.
roncachamp
Final Approach
You feel it should be a rule because otherwise unnecessary low altitude maneuvering and mixing aircraft of disparate speeds enhances safety?