During a recent autumnweekend our pilot and his wife decided to take advantage of the beautiful dayand enjoy a leisurely flight to Heber City, Utah to visit friends and proudly showoff them their bright red Kitfox. They took their time performing theirpre-flight checks breaking up the tasks now and again to chat with friends thathad casually stopped by to visit. 

As they departed Ogden airspace east through Weber Canyon theymarveled at the colors of fall – red and yellow showing bright in the clearskies. Up East Canyon and over Park City they had nothing but smooth air and notraffic.

Approaching Heber City, our pilot announced his position crossingover Jardenell Dam (a 10 mile checkpoint) and his intentions to enter the Heberairspace. After having immediately received reports back from three aircraft inthe pattern, our pilot confirmed the pattern in use and verified the intent ofeach aircraft to stay in the circuit.

At 5 miles our pilot announced his intent to cross midfieldto enter the pattern left downwind. Each aircraft responded with their positions. When he called out againat 2 miles, a departing aircraft offered to extend their upwind to make room.

In our pilot’s words “We announced our arrival at one halfmile and each of the aircraft were in the position they said. As they werecalling out, my wife was pointing to each aircraft. The departing aircraft wasindeed extending, one was calling final, and the third was just announcing basewhen my wife pointed to it. Suddenly there was a cowling and prop in ourvision! It was really close – close enough to see all the colors on the wing.”

Continues our pilot “Instinctively I rolled right 90 degreeswhile blurting on the radio “PITTS!” The biplane rolled right and passed us closerthan I ever want to be again. On the ground the Pitts pilot’s wife told us hefelt that the other pilots were too chatty and he hated to communicate.”

Our pilot concludes “On our way home that evening, my wifecalmly asked me how much a traffic advisory system cost.”

I remember a couple of years ago at a trade show a pilotapproached me to discuss my column and collision avoidance. The conversationincluded the subject of transponders since both active and passive collisionavoidance systems rely on transponder responses from target aircraft. Thevisiting pilot almost proudly revealed that while his aircraft does have aworking transponder, he never turns it on exclaiming “I don’t want them in mybusiness knowing where I am and what I’m doing!”

Despite my impression that this was more a statement ofprivacy rather than an admission to conceal some sort of illicit activity, Iwas nevertheless taken aback by the comment as someone who enjoys the benefitsof technology and feels an obligation to be mindful of best practices as theypertain to our collective safety and well being.

It’s important to remember that NORDO is certainly legal andtransponders are only required in certain airspace classifications. There’snothing legally wrong with flying without each of these in the rightcircumstances – though I personally can’t even imagine it, particularly in busyairspace. But it seems odd to me that someone would choose to deliberately NOTuse the equipment that is readily at their disposal that could help to make agiven situation easier to manage and safer for everyone.

It takes all kinds (usually with reference to the OTHER guy).Heads up my friends.

Fly safe(r).

Anthony Nalli is the Director of Canadian Development,General Aviation Collision Avoidance and President of SciDacCorporation/PCAS.ca. PCAS.ca is dedicated to the implementation of affordablecollision avoidance devices in General Aviation with a mission to eliminatemid-air collisions and dramatically reduce close calls. Anthony can be reachedat This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , 1-888-PCAS-123 (GTA: 416-225-9266), and www.PCAS.ca