"Vaughn Simon" wrote in
:

OK, perhaps I had my head up my... errr, you know. Perhaps the
other guy
could have made a better radio call. Anyhow...

I landed at a very quiet uncontrolled field a few weeks ago. As I
taxied
back on the taxiway for my departure, I kept hearing a helicopter
calling out pattern legs for a place called "tango". As I recall, he
never mentioned the name of the field, or used the word "taxiway" in
his radio call, so I assumed that he was just practicing at some
nearby pad. (My error, when in doubt...) It wasn't until I had taken
off that I realized that I had been using taxiway T. I probably
seriously ****ed the guy off, and/or risked having a helicopter land
on top of me.

Lesson learned!

So now the question. Who has priority on a taxiway? Surface
traffic or
landing traffic?



AFAIK, when helis are using taxiways, they are taxiing. They are supposed
to use the runway for takeoff and londing ops and the taxiwas to get where
they want to on the field after that. I'm only going by what I've observed,
but they always seem to defer to other traffic when doing so as well.
Aside form the legalities, it makes sense. They're basicaly big, barely
controlled chainsaws and it's simply impracitacal to mix them in with fixed
wing traffic any other way.

Bertie