Weird Pattern Altitude (785')?

DesertNomad

DesertNomad

Pattern Altitude
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
2,464
Location
Northern NV
Display Name
Display name:
DesertNomad
I am looking at KHTH (Hawthorne, NV) in the A/FD and no pattern altitude is listed. Field elevation is 4230', and Foreflight lists TP as 5015'.

Where did they come up with a 785' TP and why isn't it listed in the A/FD?

Where is Foreflight getting this data as I don't see any other reference to it on various sites?

I have flown in there a few times and am going there again tomorrow. There is no reason I can see not to make it 800' or 1000'.

Thoughts?
 
AOPA also has it listed at 5015' in their airport info section of their site.

No idea why it's below 1000' though.
 
If you look at KEYW you will see that the light weights have an 800' msl TPA. So TPAs under 1,000 aren't unheard of.
 
Several airports around here are 800' and a couple are 1000', but 785' is just weird.
 
40I pattern altitude is 1720, Elev 955. 765 AGL

Cheers
 
Re: Weird Pattern Altitude (785')

Like anybody will yank your chain if you use an 800 foot pattern. Or an 1100 foot pattern.
 
Re: Weird Pattern Altitude (785')

Sac Arrow said:
Like anybody will yank your chain if you use an 800 foot pattern. Or an 1100 foot pattern.
Click to expand...

:D

I was flying with the DPE who eventually did my checkride. The airport we were at is at 5050' with a pattern altitude of 5850'... I was at 5900' (which I had always used when flying with my CFI) and he asked me why we were at 5900' and not 5850'.

I let it drop back down to 5850 to keep him happy. :yes:
 
DesertNomad said:
...Where did they come up with a 785' TP ...
Click to expand...

Well first of all it's not 785 it's 5015. Why are you obsessing over the calculated AGL? At my field the TPA is 1000 ft and the airport is 79 ft so I suppose 921 is just as weird as 785, maybe even weirder.

Edit: on further thought I'll bet it was supposed to be 5050 and somewhere along the line it got misquoted or mis-transcribed as 5015 and nobody has bothered to correct it.
 
Last edited:
KeyWestPhotog said:
If you look at KEYW you will see that the light weights have an 800' msl TPA. So TPAs under 1,000 aren't unheard of.
Click to expand...

That's a frigging awesome ICAO code. Cool that they used the "K" as part of the name.

And to stay on topic... my home airport's is 800 because of a low Charlie shelf.
 
Strange...

I just looked at the FAA FADDS data file on airports, and they have a field in there for TPA, but for HTH it's blank (which generally implies at 1,000' AGL). It shows field elevation at 4,230.5'...
 
My home field (PAO) has two different TPA's, 800' for traffic over the bay and 1000' for traffic over the residential area.:goofy:
 
Aeric said:
My home field (PAO) has two different TPA's, 800' for traffic over the bay and 1000' for traffic over the residential area.:goofy:
Click to expand...


KVNY is like that, 1000 on one side 800 on the other because of the landing traffic going into Burbank passing directly overhead
 
Same as HWD. TPA: 600'AGL EXCEPT RWY 10L-28R 800'AGL.

Airlines right above you landing on OAK 29.
 
Our TPA is 1,000' AGL or 1,029' MSL. That's not so unusual ... but it puts the TPA only 71 feet below the floor of the overlying Class Charlie shelf. Keeps you on your toes.
 
Does anyone know an airport that uses a lower TPA in order to help with training? I ad been pondering ways to provide training at lower cost, and it occurred to me that if you were using LSAs, that a lower TPA could help when you are doing touch and goes. A 600 AGL TPA would get you up to TPA in about 60% of the time when compared to a 1000 AGL TPA, and if you stabilized your descent, it would cut almost as much off final. Downwind could be a little shorter, too. You might get somewhere around 40%-50% more landings per hour, cutting training costs by somewhere around 30 percent per landing.
 
Salida, CO amuses me for some reason, it's KANK
 
Other than KEYW and KEEN, I think a few folk are missing the point. Oh wait, St Pete is KPIE :D
 
register@teamandras.com said:
Does anybody know why KSZP has such a low TPA?
Click to expand...

Probably because 1000' patterns don't make much sense for fun airplanes, fun flying, and competent pilots...which seems to characterize SZP. I've never been there, but I get the impression that it's a rare refuge from the rule-bound, wrote procedure, flight school monkey, and safety nazi types that you find at most other airports these days.
 
29 posts in, I'm still wondering what is odd about flying patterns at different altitudes. ;)
 
denverpilot said:
29 posts in, I'm still wondering what is odd about flying patterns at different altitudes. ;)
Click to expand...

What I am wondering is why they are not just 800' or 1000' AGL instead of some odd number like 1720' (765' AGL). No Class B,C,D airspace anywhere near.

No big deal, just odd.

Cheers
 
register@teamandras.com said:
...Does anybody know why KSZP has such a low TPA?
Click to expand...

If you've been there you know the pattern is kind of squeezed in between the airport and the hills and you've got a really short base so unless you want to do a Baghdad approach there's no point in having that extra two or four hundred feet on downwind.

I'm not understanding why people are calculating the actual AGL figures for these TPA's. Sure, you want to be around 800 to 1000 feet over the field in general and so they pick a nice round MSL figure to come close to that but really, why is 725 any different than say 981? (which is the AGL of the pattern at my field) If you wanted all TPA's to be exactly 800 feet over the field we'd have at all sorts of odd numbers like 1721 or 879. At many fields it would be different at one end than the other and who the heck is gonna keep their altitude within a FOOT? It's kind of silly even talking about it.
 
I am wondering why one would care what non-FAA publications say TPA at a particular airport is if the FAA is silent on the subject?
 
Silvaire said:
I'm not understanding why people are calculating the actual AGL figures for these TPA's. [snip] If you wanted all TPA's to be exactly 800 feet over the field we'd have at all sorts of odd numbers like 1721 or 879.
Click to expand...
That's exactly the way the A/FD publishes it at many airports, including mine. At some others, it's rounded off to an even number MSL. It's not consistent.
 
alfadog said:
I am wondering why one would care what non-FAA publications say TPA at a particular airport is if the FAA is silent on the subject?
Click to expand...

Fair enough, but if the FAA's AFD is silent on TPA, what's the TPA? Or, is it whatever you want it to be?

I'm not the OP, but I don't know the answer, so that's why I would care about the non-FAA publications.

How did ForeFlight arrive at a TPA of 5,015 for KHTH, an airport with a field elevation of 4230? Given that the TPA in ForeFlight is 785 AGL, it doesn't seem to be some rule of thumb, but rather pretty specific.

This is the first time I've seen an AFD entry without a TPA, but I'm just a student. Is that common?

Can you help?

KHTH_ForeFlight.jpg


KHTH.jpg
 
Last edited:
Pilawt said:
That's exactly the way the A/FD publishes it at many airports, including mine. At some others, it's rounded off to an even number MSL. It's not consistent.
Click to expand...

And at many, like my airport, it's not even mentioned so you're right about that.
 
The 5015' traffic pattern altitude of KHTH is indeed exactly 800' AGL for a certain point on the field. It's also a lot of other AGL altitudes for other points.

Why? Because it's not a flat. Far from it. The field has a significant slope of 0.8 degrees for the main runway, and 1.4 degrees for the crosswind runway.

The main runway is 4180 MSL at one end, and 4230 MSL at the other. So that runway is indeed 4215 MSL somewhere in between, and 5015 is 800' above that point.
 
Last edited:
There ya go, a definitive answer that explains it all. We can put this thread to bed now. ;)
 
register@teamandras.com said:
I was adding TPAs to my Los Angeles TAC when I noticed that. Does anybody know why KSZP has such a low TPA?
Click to expand...


Aaahh Santa Paula, or as my instructor calls it. "Cowboy country, where people have radios, they just don't use them:goofy:"

Its nuts there, hills and house's on all sides

http://santapaulaairport.com/traffic-pattern/runway22

http://santapaulaairport.com/traffic-pattern/runway04

This is what they want, but every one from there just does what the hell they want.

I flew in there once, and followed the west/calm wind pattern and got cut off 3 time's, when I questioned in on the radio I was told, we knew you where following the pattern so knew we could sneek by. Nice. Never been back again
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top