Thank you, I was thinking more in terms of an in flight emergency such as engine failure rather than an avoidance move, but of course if the reciprocal traffic is close enough it would surely be an emergency!
I was taught them as an emergency avoidance maneuver – full throttle and a hard turn to the right. I’ve been talking a lot of nonsense today for which I apologise. Last post e.g. mentioned radial engines when I meant ‘rotary’.
That said, it would be interesting to know how the rules developed. It’s trivial to find how many HP a Sopwith Camel had or what gun it carried, but very hard to find out whether they flew left hand circuits, right hand circuits, or no circuits at all. The closest I got was a 1920s book on flying that suggested that traffic rules might become necessary if flying were to become more popular. There’s no mention of anything approximating ’rules of the air; in the 1916 flying manual by Grahame White and Harper on project Gutenberg.
kwif it is perhaps just a natural development of an airfield being a large grass area with no defined runways and no RT. In other words arrrive overhead to see the windsock and then choose the direction to land. The last one I knew of was in Norfolk and I think it may well have been Swanton Morley. I am sure others will have more knowledge of Swanton.
Neil wrote:
I don’t know about other technical hobbies like scuba diving, but that requires adherence to best practice to avoid personal injury or death to participants and their colleagues, yet seem relatively unburdened by the detailed legal regulation we have in flying.
Diver’s mistakes typically won’t impact people not involved. And it’s harder to involve people without training in more advanced dives. Regulators are thus less motivated to stick their noses in. That doesn’t prevent them from trying to protect you from yourself.
kwlf wrote:
following line features, is there any fundamental reason why we should fly on one side and not the other?
Well, the guy or gal flying in the other direction won’t be flying directly at you. I have seen this recommendation even when using radio navigation while flying VFR (keep the track to your left, that is fly on the right side).
kwlf wrote:
which begs the question why emergency turns are now to the right.
If you were supposed to break to the left and followed both rules, you would cross “the line”. While breaking to the right keeps you on your side. I would guess that these rules developed together.
Cobalt wrote:
The circuit debate is a great example of what I mean.
Maybe because there are a lot of local rules which do not follow the standard left hand circuit?
In Europe, you have a lot of airfields which define the way the circuits should be flown with drawing lines on maps which do not at all correspond to a standard traffic circuit but rather an obstacle course around noise sensitive areas (eg just about anywhere where someone lives) . I remember being slightly surprised to find airports which do not have these prescribed tracks but simply state “standard circuit” such as Memmingen in Germany. All Swiss Airports have them, many in Germany and quite a few elsewhere.
See this example.
In the UK, the rule of the land is overhead join. In the US it´s as you write, standard circuit. Elsewhere, different yet again.
What makes flying especcially in Europe so different from places like the US and Canada is exactly these things.
When questions are asked about certain things, a discussion evolves. Which is the whole purpose of a forum, why otherwise would you bother?
Martin wrote:
Well, the guy or gal flying in the other direction won’t be flying directly at you. I have seen this recommendation even when using radio navigation while flying VFR (keep the track to your left, that is fly on the right side).
Well, clearly. But why should the convention be to fly on the right of the feature rather than the left? My intuition is that it’s likely to be an old, old rule.
mh wrote:
Either that or being taught no or the wrong technique to manage overshooting.
Does it matter what the pilot does as long as he/ she doesn’t try to maintain height by hauling back on the yoke – as taught in PPL exercise 9 (medium level turn) and later in ex. 15 (steep level turn)?
We can maintain 1g and turn safely through 90, 180 or 270 degrees by banking as required and allowing the nose to drop onto the new ground target. As long as we don’t pull back the stick, nothing bad can happen; for example, see minutes 1:50 of this clip:
Peter wrote:
the Robin pilot we saw at Corfu who flew in from France with a Michelin road atlas
Prob80 a Savoyard? But seriously, the 1:200,000 Michelin regional maps show the passes and their altitudes, the nature reserves, and other details needed to plan and navigate safely in the mountains. Then we just need Bossy or Garmin Pilot or EasyVFR as well to locate the small airfields.
@Jacko: Yes, that would be one possibility, although a more demanding one. I do teach those turns in PPL training and in aerotow training as a method of energy management, but they result in a non-stabilized approach and thus are propably not the best solution for new pilots, those weaker on stick and rudder skills, or if you aim at passenger comfort. I also teach the more comfortable (and in my eyes the more preferable) method of keep on turning at normal (20-30°) bank angle and turning speed onto an “intercept heading” to just fly back onto the runway centerline. If the space isn’t sufficient, I usually recommend going around and turning to final earlier than on the previous approach.
The steep turn always uses energy, either from the engine, speed or altitude. You will notice that on your (very nice, btw) video, too, that the pilot easily loses altitude and speed during the turns. It takes much more skill to perform and coordinate properly in an overshooted approach.
Or maybe 
