July 02, 2004

Dueling Bonanzas

On the approach into Santa Rosa, just after we announce about 5 miles out to an otherwise entirely quiet CTAF that we're on the VOR approach for 32 and we'll be doing a straight-in touch-and-go on 32, first one Bonanza and then another comes on line and announces they're approaching VFR from the southeast for 14 (the wind's calm and doesn't favour either runway). No problem -- we call the lead Bonanza and establish an informal plan with him, and all goes well (except I botch the landing a bit in a hurry to get out of there -- Bonanzas are fast, especially when going the opposite way from (or perhaps to) you in the pattern...). But in the pattern the Bonanzas start a sort of local Bob Channel thing, and we're subjected to several minutes of slow(ish) drawl about "crawling it in", landing long, and (I'm not quite making this up...) "Bob, are you on-frequency?". The Bob Channel's reach is expanding, I guess.

No comments: