Mon Oct 13, 2014 8:20 pm
#1321622
Seeing the thread about Runway Direction reminded me about something I meant to post.
One fine Saturday more than 10 years ago, I headed the flying group Pup over Thruxton towards Old Sarum. I'd never been there before and we (the group) all liked to visit new airfields, so I was used to doing this. After saying goodbye to Thruxton, I asked my passenger in the RHS to dial in the frequency for Old Sarum, then called "Old Sarum, Golf Alpha ...." The reply was almost what I expected, although it seemed that the runway direction was 10 degrees different but I guessed that was just me writing down the wrong number. I repeated it back, but when I made all the subsequent calls I wondered why the reply from the A/G was fainter. I then got the definite feeling that things weren't quite right as I couldn't see the other traffic where I expected, and now I couldn't hear A/G at all. This had happened to me before elsewhere when the A/G operator had not realized that I was a visitor and thought I would cope without him, so I wasn't too worried. Still not sure what was wrong, I proceeded round the circuit and landed. By the time I had shut down and got out, there was a chap who told me that I had flown the wrong circuit direction, why was I non-radio and would I please visit Control?
Yes, I had been calling the wrong airfield. It turned out that the frequencies for Old Sarum and Blackbushe were almost the same (as are the runway directions but not the circuit direction), and Blackbushe was probably wondering where I was! It would be easy to blame everyone else, but I know I should have been more careful. Even me prefixing my call with the airfield name had not been picked up, and everything thereafter was me trying to make sense of an uncomfortable feeling!
And both airfields still are (respectively) 123.2 and 122.3, so the mistake could still be made.
One fine Saturday more than 10 years ago, I headed the flying group Pup over Thruxton towards Old Sarum. I'd never been there before and we (the group) all liked to visit new airfields, so I was used to doing this. After saying goodbye to Thruxton, I asked my passenger in the RHS to dial in the frequency for Old Sarum, then called "Old Sarum, Golf Alpha ...." The reply was almost what I expected, although it seemed that the runway direction was 10 degrees different but I guessed that was just me writing down the wrong number. I repeated it back, but when I made all the subsequent calls I wondered why the reply from the A/G was fainter. I then got the definite feeling that things weren't quite right as I couldn't see the other traffic where I expected, and now I couldn't hear A/G at all. This had happened to me before elsewhere when the A/G operator had not realized that I was a visitor and thought I would cope without him, so I wasn't too worried. Still not sure what was wrong, I proceeded round the circuit and landed. By the time I had shut down and got out, there was a chap who told me that I had flown the wrong circuit direction, why was I non-radio and would I please visit Control?
Yes, I had been calling the wrong airfield. It turned out that the frequencies for Old Sarum and Blackbushe were almost the same (as are the runway directions but not the circuit direction), and Blackbushe was probably wondering where I was! It would be easy to blame everyone else, but I know I should have been more careful. Even me prefixing my call with the airfield name had not been picked up, and everything thereafter was me trying to make sense of an uncomfortable feeling!
And both airfields still are (respectively) 123.2 and 122.3, so the mistake could still be made.