[Larry Perkin]

I fly at a non-towered airport with a variety of aircraft types including bizjets, jump planes and helicopters. FAA Advisory Circular 90-66B is a good resource for non-towered airport operations. While I fly a “fast” trike and can almost match pattern speeds with a Skyhawk, I am still slow in comparison. I am not an instructor but will offer a few strategies that seem to work for me.

Situational awareness is key, i.e. see and avoid, radio communications and ads-b traffic. Know your destination airport, get the AWOS from 10-15 miles out. Get on the CTAF, make sure its the right frequency and start listening to the traffic. You now have about 10-15 minutes to form that 3D picture in your head. Then flying (and surviving) becomes a problem of geometry and time. Am I going to arrive at a checkpoint at the same time as another aircraft? No points for being first, I can delay.

I communicate – bigly! I identify my aircraft early. I don’t say “Revo N# …”, nobody except trike pilots know what type of aircraft that is. I don’t think “Experimental N# …” cuts it either, that could be anything fast or slow. I use “Light Sport Trike N#” or “Red Trike N#”. Light Sport provides a clue that you are a slower aircraft, I think most pilots associate Trike with Ultralight as being a slower aircraft-(exasperated sigh) fine. I will make “progress” reports, e.g. “four thousand, descending, 15/10/5/3/1 miles from Cement plant, inbound” and position reports, e.g. “entering left downwind, downwind abeam, abeam the numbers”. I am proactive letting other aircraft know where I am.

For traffic pattern entries, we’ve all been trained to FAA standards, i.e. make radio calls inbound, report at VFR checkpoints, make normal traffic pattern entries, fly pattern altitude. Other pilots, being trained similarly, expect that behavior to know where to look and, in most cases, will compensate for slower aircraft. However, I will consider “short circuiting” the normal pattern if regs and safety permit and fly direct to a midfield or base leg entry. My home airport has a crosswind runway and if I can handle the crosswinds, I can fly a straight-in or change a downwind to a base leg for that crosswind runway.

In busy times, I tend to fly a tighter pattern which is slightly inside a “normal” traffic pattern and not the usual square pattern with a turn to base, then a turn to final. My home airport has a long runway so I will also consider landing anywhere between the beginning and midfield if I am number 1 for landing to expedite and make way for all the other aircraft behind me. When I commit to landing, I will roll into base and continue the turn to the point on final where I would do a normal landing-in extreme cases all the way down to the round out point.

Finally, be courteous. Larger aircraft, helicopters, bizjets and Jump Planes are burning much more fuel than me. That doesn’t give them any more priority under the regs but it doesn’t hurt to be nice. In most cases, I can extend my downwind allowing a faster aircraft to land without having to fly a final approach that would be its own cross country flight. Similarly, if I see a faster aircraft at the hold line waiting to take off, I can extend, do a 360, do s-turns so they can get out. They will remember you kindly the next time.