"John T" wrote in message
m...
"Kyle Boatright" wrote in message


Long story short, the guy flew a normal downwind plus 2.5 miles, and
his downwind was literally a mile wide to boot...
...
The question in my mind was... Did the Cessna flying doofus even
realize that A) he was flying a dumb and dangerous pattern, being
outside of gliding range from the field, or that B) he caused a bad
chain reaction in the pattern.??

What kind of Cessna? 150? 182? 206? Caravan? My point is the higher
performance the plane, the larger the pattern. I wasn't there, so I'll
take your word the pattern was wider than it needed to be. Still, I
consider "gliding range in the pattern" a goal, not a rule with a "dumb"
label applied to violators.

The guy was flying a 172, and turning 500 extra feet of altitude into a 3x
sized pattern put him and everyone behind him at increased risk.


Even if he was wide and long, why did you guys let it affect your pattern?
You could've entered slow flight and/or used shallow S-turns, for
instance, to eat time.

You saw the part where each successive airplane flew a smaller pattern?
There is only so much you can do when the origial spacing is 3/4 mile (?) or
thereabouts. Airplane one (a Cessna) flew the downwind at 75 knots,
airplane two (another Cessna) could comfortably slow to 65, airplane three
( a Grumman) probably needed 70 or 75 knots to be happy, and I was OK at 65
knots.


My real point is "flying doofi" will always show themselves at the pattern
(and elsewhere). The only thing we control is our reaction to them.

You're right, but the problem with flying doofi is that we (you, I, and
everyone else) *expect* other pilots to act in a "normal" manner. If a guy
radios that he's gonna extend his downwind, we understand. But nobody
expects a downwind extended by 2 miles. I'm sure everyone in tonight's
pattern expected the guy to turn base ANY SECOND once he was a half mile
beyond the normal pattern, and as the downwind extended and extended, I'd
bet everyone behind the first guy was wondering.... What the heck is that
guy doing???


--
John T
http://sage1solutions.com/blogs/TknoFlyer
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