"john smith" wrote in message ...
How often do you spot traffic without guidance from ATC when you are out
flying"

A few years back, before the New Smyrna Beach Airport (KEVB) had a control
tower
we made all our call outs on the CTAF and while on short final we noticed
something odd.
The image before us was hard to make out but as we got closer to the runway
we realized
that it was a twin on takeoff from runway 20.
The problem with that was the fact that we were on the reciprocal end
landing on runway 02.
The twin was hard to make out because of how low he was to the trees after
he had done
a downwind takeoff without making any calls to anyone (yes we were on the
correct
frequency, we could here everyone else make their calls).
The wind that day was 030 @ 11kts. so that made runway of choice was 02.
That head-on collision was avoided by adding full power and banking hard
right.
But that isn't the end of this story.
We were there to test fly a plane that I was interested in buying.
The owner took us up in the pattern to demonstrate the plane to us but the
first
problem was that he also tried to take off from the wrong runway and was
yelled at by everyone on the frequency.

Since then the New Smyrna Beach Airport (KEVB) now has a working control
tower.

David.