[Charles Hunt]

Nipped over to Headcorn today for fuel. One ahead making low approach and go around. Saw them start to climbe from the threshold so I throttled back to increase my rate of descent.

Looking forward I then saw the aircraft ahead climbing towards a black dot ahead, a helicopter. They seemed to be getting very close, is there anything I can say that can help, without possibly making things worse?

The dots merged......................and then separated.

And here’s the learning point. Having been transfixed by the potential tragedy ahead, I now found myself at only a couple of hundred feet a long way short of the threshold. An application of power sorted it all out, but I really shouldn’t have let it develop that far.

[Cessna57]

+1

I learnt about parallax error this way when watching an aircraft turn short final from the base leg and descend to a field the other side of the road. He didn’t have time or the inclination to transmit a mayday.

I was inexperienced enough to make a radio call to the tower to warn them it looked like the student one ahead of me was going into the field the other side of the road.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when ten seconds later the parallax sorted itself out and they were over the numbers.

Red face, tower visited and apologies all round when I was back on the ground.