Post
by Nigel Hitchman » Wed Sep 07, 2011 8:26 am
Rob has got it right, people flying faster aeroplanes need to fly slower and plan better. sometimes it wont work, then an early go around is a good idea. I too fly an RV6 and can happily fly at 70mph, although not a lot slower, but I can still manage to stay behind most other aircraft, and even fit in with the flexwings at Popham and Spamfield most of the time.
Slower aircraft should also try to fly faster until they really need to slow down on final. Dont do your usual circuit at 50mph, when you could fly downwind at 80 and then slow to 50 on final.
Having both approaches from the same side shouldnt cause problems as aircraft should be in one line on the downwind so when splitting for the two parrallel runways should have the same or more spacing, the problem comes from people catching each other up.
I think having opposite direction circuits at sywell would be difficult due to the built up area on the other side of the airfield and finding a suitable assembly point. It would also make everything much more complicated for the arrival routes to the assembly areas.
Oshkosh doesnt do much better, they have 3 runways to use which helps and a week to get all the traffic in, but you still see lots of go arounds, a few groundloops etc. One advantage they have is that you can go off the runways onto the grass at all points, this would really help on the hard at Sywell if landing aircraft could exit onto the grass as soon as under control.
At Oshkosh they also have the advantage of allowing multiple landings at the same time on the same runway, ie one lands short and one lands long. Unfortuantely the CAA wont allow Sywell to do this, back at Kemble/Cranfield we were allowed to land with aircraft still on the runway further ahead taxiing towards the turnoff, this made it a lot safer and less unecessary go arounds. The CAA say this is only allowed with full Air Traffic control, however, we had very modified full ATC, and in later years it was actually operated as a FISO service, the same as Sywell!! But the controllers had many years of experience. Perhaps the CAA will give in and allow this at Sywell now Jeff and team have more experience of the Rally situation (Im sure they could have handled it straight away!) The other advantage at previous Rallys was the control caravan which was moved near to the approach end, allowing controllers a better view of when they needed to tell aircraft to go around. That was very expensive though, to equip and for the yearly CAA approvals/controller checkouts.