Aviation articles by Garth Wallace

1/ Do you want a punch in the nose?

I flew to an uncontrolled airport. I had been there often so I knew the layout and unicom frequency. I didn’t bother to look in the flight supplement or to check NOTAMS.
Five minutes out, I gave my position, intentions and asked for an airport advisory. There was no response. I couldn’t hear any other aircraft in the circuit so I continued for an overhead arrival.
Approaching the airport, I could see an airplane departing so I set up for a circuit to that runway and called again. Nothing. I could see another aircraft inbound for a straight-in downwind. It was well back so I turned to a mid-downwind ahead of it and called again.
I checked the radio squelch. It worked but nobody was talking. I gave up on the radio, watched for traffic and continued for a landing. I turned off the runway and taxied to the ramp.
My passenger and I climbed out of the airplane and walked into the clubhouse. There was a notice board behind the flying school counter announcing a unicom frequency change for the airport. The effective date was a month old.
Oops.
Familiarity breeds laziness. This time it had caught up to me. Oh well, no harm was done. I made a mental note of the new frequency.
I could see the aircraft that had landed behind us arriving on the ramp. As the propeller stopped turning, a young flying instructor jumped out and made a beeline for the clubhouse. He burst through the door and bellowed, "Who was flying that red airplane that just landed."
"I was," I replied.
He hustled over to me and stuck his face in mine. "What frequency were you on?" he demanded.
I could have admitted my mistake but this guy was threatening mad. "Why do you ask?" I replied cautiously.
"Because you didn’t make any radio calls and you cut me off in the circuit," he declared loudly. "Don’t you know that the frequency changed here a month ago?" His face was turning bright red.
The five other people in the small room stopped what they were doing.
"I do now," I said as calmly as I could.
"Well, smart mouth, we could have collided!" he yelled. "It’s against the law to fly without the right information. You should have checked the latest supplement and called for NOTAMs."
This airport vigilante was right about knowing the correct frequency. It would have made my arrival safer. If he thought his life was in danger, he needed lessons on sharing the circuit with other aircraft. I decided he didn’t want to hear that part.
"Thank you," I replied. "I’ll remember next time."
He wasn’t going to be satisfied that easily. His face started to turn purple.
"Guy’s like you are a menace to aviation!" he roared. Now he was grandstanding to the others in the room. "If you’re going to fly like you own the sky, you should quit now before you kill someone!"
"Well, if you’ve never made a mistake, I will," I snapped back.
My retort just spurred him into a greater rage.

There are all kinds of pilots. Not one of us is perfect. We are in aviation together for better or worse. If we help each other we can make it better.
The belligerent instructor was right to point out my error but he could have asked in a normal voice if I was familiar with the new frequency. No one wants to learn from a screamer. He lost credibility with the flying school customers in the room and he had me defending my ego rather than learning anything.
I wanted to remind him that radios were not required at his small airport. I thought of asking him if he flew while reading information instead of looking out the windows but I decided he wasn’t in my face to listen.
I was getting the impression that this guy had made a career of berating pilots who arrived on the wrong frequency. Maybe he was the one who campaigned for the change so he would have something to rant about.
As he continued his tirade I had the urge to punch him in the nose. I didn’t but I wanted to. I stopped answering him and he eventually gave up and stormed off.
My passenger that day was my father. He had learned to fly when all training aircraft had tailwheels and no radios. At the time of this encounter he was in his eighties. He had stood to one side during the instructor’s onslaught. Now he walked up to me, took measure of my agitation, smiled a little and said, "Nice welcoming committee."
He was being cute but it helped defuse my anger. I vowed then and there to be nice to other pilots no matter how stupid or ignorant they acted.

Later in my flying career, the pilot of a high-performance, single-engine airplane was taxiing out ahead of me at an uncontrolled airport. The only runway was short. The windsock indicated that 06 was the active. It had been all day. The pilot radioed that he was backtracking for runway 06. I waited at mid-field short of the runway.
The pilot turned northeast and taxied toward the end of Runway 24. I called him on my radio. "Aircraft taxing, you’re going the wrong way for a departure on Runway 06."
There was a silence as the aircraft continued and then came to a stop. The pilot was obviously checking the windsock and trying to decide who was right. Finally he turned his aircraft around and headed for the other end.
"The wind must have switched," he declared over the radio.
I might have just saved the guy the embarrassment, expense and pain of running a $100,000 airplane off the end of the runway attempting to takeoff with a strong tailwind. I expected him to say, "OK, thanks very much," but his ego replied instead. I could feel my face turning red. I wanted to punch the mike button and say, "You’re welcome, you ungrateful dipstick!" Remembering my incident with Instructor Screamer, I did a slow burn instead.

I believe that most pilots don’t speak up enough. We are mainly a conservative, non-confrontational lot. If we see or hear another pilot making a mistake, we don’t react except in our thoughts.
If you see an aviator needs a nudge in the right direction, please do it, but do it nicely so he’ll thank you rather than punch you in the nose.
If other pilots help you along, leave your ego out of it and thank them.