Radio Silence (Are we training them that way?)

[Daleandee]

It was a nice morning for a bit of exploring and a few laps around the patch before more important things came due. As I meandered back to my home airport ADS-B showed a target 2.5 miles at 7:00 and a several hundred feet above me. I made my radio calls and entered the pattern only to watch this one get closer. Turning final I couldn't spot him but ADS-B made it appear that he had descended to enter the pattern.

I landed with wig wag lights on & a short roll out. I turned 180º and made a call to taxi to the ramp as I looked up & spotted a Diamond training plane on short final coming right at me. I noted in my radio call that I had the landing traffic in sight. I expedited my exit from the runway and he landed as I did so. There had been zero calls from this plane and I asked if he was on frequency. After a what seemed like forever a student came on with very broken English, so poor that I could hardly understand his seeming apology. He then went to the far end of the runway, make another incomprehensible radio call and took off in the opposite direction.

I couldn't tell whether he was solo or if an instructor was also aboard. Keep them eyes outside ...

 

[wilkersk]

I haven't noticed it as much lately. But a couple of years ago one of the area 141 schools had a whole bunch of Chinese students. I heard that their US visas, travel, training and housing was all being funded through some sort of program, and these guys just flew full-time till they knocked out their ratings. They'd leave the towered airport under class B to go clobber nearby non-towered fields untill their touch and goes and radio procedures got good enough to go pester ATC without the school getting hate from them. It got pretty interesting around our home drome for awhile.

 

[ateamer]

I haven't noticed it as much lately. But a couple of years ago one of the area 141 schools had a whole bunch of Chinese students. I heard that their US visas, travel, training and housing was all being funded through some sort of program, and these guys just flew full-time till they knocked out their ratings. They'd leave the towered airport under class B to go clobber nearby non-towered fields untill their touch and goes and radio procedures got good enough to go pester ATC without the school getting hate from them. It got pretty interesting around our home drome for awhile.

Welcome to Florida.

 

[Hengelo]

I’ve gotten buzzed or watched some super sketch nordo behavior from good old ‘Mercians too… heck I almost witnessed some octogenarian auger into a refinery on my PPL flight. Untowered means Wild West as far as I can tell. I did most of my training out of a class D so it was quite the culture shock for me to see some of the ahem “unsupervised” behaviour out there.