{"id":190,"date":"2014-04-21T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T12:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/21\/a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-rome-georgia\/"},"modified":"2018-07-09T15:30:07","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T15:30:07","slug":"a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-rome-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-rome-georgia\/","title":{"rendered":"A funny thing happened on the way to Rome\u2026Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"
When Center controllers serve as Approach controllers, they usually have much less capability to see other traffic down low because their antenna site is just too far away from the airport they are controlling.<\/div>\n
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I was the pilot flying and my partner had been making all the required calls on the Unicom, as well as monitoring the Unicom frequency while we were still with Atlanta Center.<\/div>\n
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Since everything was progressing as expected, until the turn inbound, I initially wondered if the target was the preceding jet, but I dismissed that because they had way too big a lead on us. So, who else could it be? Finally, the pilot of the single-engine Cessna made his ten-mile call on the Unicom, totally unaware that we were 5 miles behind them, at roughly double their speed, lined up for the same runway. I do not know for sure, but I suspect a \u201cpractice instrument approach\u201d was being conducted. I asked the pilot to do a Left 360 to get behind us, and continued to watch them on our Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) display. (Man, that system really lived up to its name on this flight!)<\/div>\n
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At two miles behind the Cessna and closing rapidly, we were still IMC. I decided to go around, and I began to climb to the missed approach altitude to avoid the interloper. We called Atlanta to ask for a reset.<\/div>\n
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The second approach was uneventful. The crew from the other jet and the FBO attendant said they heard it all on the Unicom. Our passengers took it all in stride and their only comment was, when they saw me adjust my air vent to blow some cold air on my face, they knew things were getting tense. I admitted to them that the situation had raised my blood pressure.<\/div>\n
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I have been an FAA Safety Team (FAAST) volunteer for the past few years, and I really wanted to talk to that pilot once I got on the ground, but they did not land in Rome.<\/div>\n
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I have long held the opinion that doing practice approaches while VFR is a \u201cfalse economy\u201d for training because that is not the rules you will be playing by when it is for real. Lowering your workload to concentrate on your cross check may seem like a good idea, but it\u2019s not making you a better instrument pilot. As it turns out at places like Rome, you have responsibilities to concurrently communicate with ATC and the pilots at the intended destination when it\u2019s a non-towered airport.<\/div>\n
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Here is a paradigm shift for you; I once heard a seasoned and highly placed ATC specialist correct the verbiage in the AIM. He said, \u201cIt is not an uncontrolled airport, it is a pilot-controlled airport.\u201d And, of course, he is right. The rules are there as a framework, but ultimately, it is good communication with other pilots and behaving in a expected manner that ensures safety. I have a whole rant about pilots who do not use the Unicom \u201cbecause they don\u2019t have to,\u201d but I\u2019ll save that for another post.<\/div>\n
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The VFR pattern procedures are designed to be self-deconflicting if they are adhered to by all players, but \u201cclearing on the radios\u201d is as important as clearing out the windows.<\/div>\n
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The story in Rome highlighted a couple of issues for me. First, even if the Cessna pilot was following the cloud clearance rules by being 500 feet below the overcast, venturing 10 miles away from the airport and playing in the \u201cIFR sandbox\u201d was, at a minimum, bad form. If they had just entered a left downwind from a 45 degree angle, I think this whole situation could have been avoided.<\/div>\n
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If you are going to practice IFR flying, do it all the way, following all the rules of communication. If you are going in to an airport, 10 miles out is the minimum for making a call on Unicom. You can begin a listening watch much farther out than that. In fact, we had made calls well North of Rome and had been listening to the Unicom when we were 20nm North. When there is no control tower, it is a pilot-controlled field.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems I am living in a color-coded world, made possible by the ForeFlight iPad application when I am out flying. I now have a new perspective when the ForeFlight weather color is blue for Marginal VFR. There is a lurking threat that is just below the clouds when you are headed to an airport that is coded blue. I had this experience on a flight to Rome, Georgia.<\/div>\n
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\"Rome,<\/div>\n
The set up is as follows: Rome is controlled by Atlanta Center (that will be important later). The ceiling was about 2000 feet with the tops up to about 5000 msl. The business jet that was ahead of us for the ILS to Runway 01 reported icing as they entered the clouds during the approach\u2014it was winter, after all. The Initial Approach fix is 10nm from the airport, and we had briefed a parallel entry into holding as a means of getting lined up because we were approaching from the Northeast. Atlanta advised us that we should plan on holding until the preceding jet cancelled their IFR flight plan. Again, we expected that.<\/div>\n
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Upon turning inbound in the holding pattern, Atlanta advised us that the aircraft ahead of us had cancelled and that we were cleared for the approach. The controller gave the proverbial \u201cNo traffic observed between you and the airport, change to advisory frequency approved\u2026\u201d you know the rest.<\/div>\n
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As we began the descent from the IAF altitude, a target appeared on the TCAS about 5 miles in front of and below us. The traffic was too low to be picked up by the Atlanta Center controller. This situation is possible anytime the controller is vectoring you for an airport that is not the primary service airport for which the controller is based.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-foreflight-ipad-marginal-vfr-traffic-collision-avoidance-system-tcas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":676,"href":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aircrewacademy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}