An hour in the pattern - this is where training intersects with real life, and the goal is simply to cope with whatever situations chance throws your way. In my neighborhood, a large, tower-controlled airport and a nearby nontowered field are the choices, and a student pilot may sample either or both on any outing. Your basic mission is to practice takeoffs and landings, but the learning goes beyond that. The moment that you taxi out, you become part of the flow - a solid citizen of your skies, with rights and obligations equal to any other pilot's. Most other participants know this and behave accordingly. A few don't - but chances are that they're just passing through; don't let them get under your skin.
Briefed, preflighted, and ready, you start the aircraft and call for taxi instructions. They contain more detail than usual because of the disruptions. And because the south 3,000 feet of the runway are closed, you understand that when the controller says, "Taxi to Runway 33," she actually means for you to taxi to Runway 33 at Kilo Intersection, which is the first access point onto the runway, and where a new threshold and numbers have been painted pending completion of the renovations.
As you begin taxiing, you note another single-engine airplane landing and clearing the runway at Lima, the next taxiway beyond Kilo. Ground control clears the arrival to taxi to the ramp and cautions you to "maintain the right side of the taxiway" until the other airplane has passed. You acknowledge with your N number, maneuver your craft off the yellow taxiway centerline, and carefully ensure sufficient wingtip clearance as the other airplane approaches.
Reaching Kilo Intersection, you perform your pretakeoff checks and switch over to the tower frequency. You verify that there is no transmission in progress, then key your mic and announce that you are ready for takeoff. The tower controller clears you for takeoff and instructs you to "make right closed traffic." He also informs you that the wind is now "three five zero at one zero knots."
The instruction to make right traffic catches you off guard. Right traffic puts you out over the city, whereas left traffic - more frequently assigned - overflies a less-developed area. However, you put it out of your mind, taxiing carefully onto the centerline, adjusting your directional gyro to the runway heading, and then easing in throttle and a touch of right rudder to keep you tracking straight ahead during acceleration. As advertised, there is a slight crosswind from the right. You instinctively add a touch of aileron in that direction. Rotate! The ground falls away; once safely clear, you crab a few degrees into the wind to track straight out on the runway heading.
Everything looks and sounds good as you trim for your climb, eye the altimeter, and plan for your crosswind turn, when the tower calls and requests that you "check transponder on." Whoops! That right-traffic clearance was more distracting than you realized - although you had entered your assigned transponder code, you forgot to turn on the transponder when you taxied out for takeoff. Sheepishly, you acknowledge the call, turn the switch to "Alt," and confirm operation.
Of course this all occurs just as you reach pattern altitude, so you glance to your right and, seeing no conflicting traffic, turn crosswind. You fly level for a few seconds, then repeat your clearing scan and turn downwind. Momentarily it will be time to run your prelanding checks and make your first landing approach.
The reason for your right-traffic clearance now makes itself known. A Boeing airliner is on a long left downwind. Approach Control must have handed off the jet to the tower before you came on the frequency. The tower controller points out the traffic to you. You reply, "traffic in sight," and are instructed to "follow that traffic, cleared for the option, caution wake turbulence." You acknowledge and reduce power to decelerate to approach speed.
So much to handle, and this just your first circuit of the pattern. Your hours of practice are paying off as you absorb the demands of the situation. You were cleared "for the option" - this means you are free to make a touch and go, a stop and go, or even just a go-around, without further contact with the tower. You were also cautioned about wake turbulence from the arriving jet. The technique here will be to remain above its glide path on final (no problem, his approach will be longer and flatter than yours) and touch down beyond the point where the puff of blue smoke erupts from the Boeing's wheels when they touch.
You keep this situation under scrutiny as you run the prelanding checks, extend flaps, and begin a descending turn onto the base leg. By now the heavy jet is on the ground; you carefully note the touchdown point, just past Lima Intersection. Rechecking your base leg, you are annoyed to find yourself closer in to the final approach course than you expected, which also means that you are higher than you should be. How did that happen? Of course. That slight crosswind from 350 degrees created a tailwind component on your base-leg heading of 240 degrees, increasing your groundspeed. You hear your instructor�s voice in your mind. "Small corrections." Calmly you reduce throttle a bit more, add final-approach flaps a bit early, thus slowing another 10 kt or so and steepening the descent angle, and retrim. These adjustments do the trick.
Turning final, you gaze down the runway and remember to touch down a few hundred feet beyond Lima (although the jet's wake is probably already dissipated). It takes a touch of right aileron and left rudder pressure to track straight on final. You decide on a touch and go, so after touchdown, you carefully retract flaps and power up, and soon you are flying again.
This time the controller calls your N number and instructs, "Make left closed traffic, cleared for the option." Both the early approach clearance and the assigned left traffic tell you that no traffic is expected during your next pattern. Turning onto the downwind, you congratulate yourself on having automatically crabbed in toward the runway slightly to keep from drifting away from the field in the wind and for solving the problems posed by that first approach without anyone noticing your "small corrections."
An airplane taxies up to Kilo Intersection, calls the tower, and declares itself ready to depart. The tower replies and instructs, "Hold short, landing traffic is a Cessna." You become alert because the airplane on the ground has failed to acknowledge the hold-short instructions. What was looking like a routine final approach and touchdown is becoming a possible go-around. The tower controller has also noticed the lapse. In a more urgent tone he instructs the aircraft on the ground to "hold short, acknowledge hold." This time the pilot replies. You switch back from go-around mode to landing mode - but you remain wary.
Over the next half-hour activity picks up. On your next circuit, there are still no inbounds, but Tower advises you that "there will be two departures" before your next touchdown. On the next, the air down low becomes choppy, so you perform a go-around. (In the go-around you remember to concentrate on flying the airplane and suppress the urge to reach for the radio to announce your change of plans; in any case there is no need to do so.) You also accommodate ATC with a lower-than-usual turn onto the crosswind leg to help speed a departure waiting down below.
During the next circuit, you are instructed to extend your downwind to accommodate an arrival on a five-mile straight-in instrument approach. Learning from a previous session's experience, you throttle back early and slow down, to keep from finding yourself miles downwind of the field when you are finally permitted to turn base. "Remember to maintain altitude during this delaying tactic!" (Your instructor's voice again.) The next pattern also resembles a traffic jam. This time you are instructed to perform a 360-degree right turn - right there on the downwind leg - for spacing. On final, you are restricted to a "touch and go only" approach because of arriving traffic to follow you. Looking down at the field, you notice that several airplanes are making their way to Kilo Intersection for departure. And an arrival has just checked in and has been told by the tower that she is "number five for the airport."
You had been hoping to use some of your solo time to practice engine-out approaches and slips to a landing, but it is obvious that conditions are not going to allow the needed flexibility to simulate an engine failure from the downwind leg or fly a long, slipping final. You could continue to fly here, but there is an alternative. Your CFI has signed you off to practice takeoffs and landings at the nontowered airport a few miles away. You decide to go there after your next approach, and you advise the tower of your intentions when you can get in a word edgewise.
This time during your climbout, instead of receiving instructions to fly right or left closed traffic, the tower gives you a vector to the northeast and instructs you to contact departure control. This frequency is also busy, but your call is immediately acknowledged by a familiar voice which tells you that you are in radar contact and instructs you to proceed direct to your destination and advise when it is in sight. In just a few minutes you can make out the intersecting runways, so you advise departure. From experience you can anticipate the reply when the controller calls your number again: "Radar service terminated, squawk one-two-zero-zero, frequency change approved."
Sharp aviator that you are, you have already placed the destination's common traffic advisory frequency in your radio's selector. Now you simply hit the flip-flop button to activate it. The frequency is quiet, so you call and request an airport advisory. At this particular field, sometimes this will generate a response but just as likely, it won't. "Won't" is the order of the day, so you will have to plan your own approach. Which way to land?
There is a Runway 4/22, and a Runway 12/30. If the surface wind here is similar to conditions at the airport you just left, the wind will be 50 degrees off either Runway 4 or Runway 30, the only difference being the choice of a left or right crosswind. The approach to Runway 30 would be more direct. From your heading of 060 degrees it takes only a 15-degree turn to be on a 45-degree entry to the left downwind. (This would put you on a heading of 075 degrees, after which you would turn 45 degrees more to a downwind heading of 120 degrees.) The entry to a downwind leg to Runway 4, in contrast, requires maneuvering through 160 degrees of turn. But experience teaches that conditions here are rarely identical to those 10 miles to the southwest. Now the windsock is in sight, as are the smokestacks at a nearby paper mill. The sock indicates, and the stacks corroborate, that the wind is directly down Runway 30.
You broadcast your entry to a downwind leg to Runway 30. Keeping an eye out for no-radio airplanes, or the light twins flown by an aerial mapping company based at the field, or any floatplanes inbound to the seaplane base on the river just off the end of Runway 4, you resume your lesson. The comings and goings here will be fewer than at the towered airport, but no less diverse or unpredictable, including the presence of deer and gulls that inhabit the premises.
The sun is going down; the wind has subsided. Only one or two aircraft have interrupted your practice, so you have shifted over to the smaller Runway 4 to give your short-field work some attention. It has been a good session, but it is time to return home. Things could still be hopping over there, and you have saved some energy to cope with whatever antics your homecoming may require. Climbing away from the nontowered airport you tune in the new ATIS broadcast. All surface restrictions are still in effect, wind calm. So is the approach frequency, and your familiar N number is assigned a squawk code and sped through the handoff from approach to tower. So quiet has the airport become that when you land, the tower controller simply instructs you to "turn right at the next taxiway, monitor ground, and taxi to the ramp." No need for another radio call - just listen for anything that might come up.
Nothing does. You taxi to parking, shut down, and secure the airplane, taking pride in tidying up the cockpit and tying taut, sturdy knots in the ropes attached to the wing struts of your trainer. Your mind is racing to preserve the lessons of the past hour. Considering all that you have experienced, it's hard to believe that your first flight was mere weeks ago; your first solo, perhaps just days ago.
You have come a long way in a short time. But to the people watching from outside the fence, you are just another pilot home from a day's flying - a few hundred feet away, but a world apart.
Dan Namowitz is a flight instructor and aviation writer living in Maine who has spent countless "hours in the pattern" during his approximately 2,000 hours flight instructing.
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