SkyDemon Forums

Standard overhead joins wrong...?

http://forums.skydemon.aero/Topic35520.aspx

By ChrisB - 9/5/2022 12:33:07 PM

Having received the runway in use and circuit direction when close to an airfield I do some hurried mental gymnastics to work out how to approach for a standard overhead join. I recently discovered the SD “Make Approach” function and was very pleased to see there is a “Standard Overhead” join option.

The first time I used it in the air was arriving at Enstone. I selected Make Approach, Runway 26, Standard Overhead. A nice big purple arrow appeared “for guidance on where to join” (to quote the SD video tutorial). I started heading towards the arrow, but after even more hurried mental gymnastics realised I would be joining from the opposite direction to that required and made corrections.

I have since used the same function arriving at other airfields and they are all wrong. According to SD a standard overhead join is approached from the dead side, with descent on the live side to join the circuit. According to the CAA a correct standard overhead join is approached from the live side, with descent on the dead side to join the circuit on the crosswind leg.

This is more than just misleading it is plain wrong. At worst, a pilot following SD’s guidance would conflict with a pilot doing a ‘correct’ overhead join. At best he would be joining high on the downwind leg and making a total hash of the circuit.

I’ve attached below a screenshot from SD and a CAA diagram of a standard overhead join to illustrate my point. Comments welcome – is there something I’m missing here?

Chris
By Briseham - 10/27/2024 10:34:33 AM

Sorry, missed last part of my post:
Finally, back to the SOJ depiction in SD: I have yet to be convinced that there is a neat, simple way to show this any better than the current SD depiction. Perhaps the way to think about it is that the thick arrow is the end of a notional longer SOJ path that has this arrow as the middle part of a dotted line from the current position to the overhead, positioning and descending, crossing the upwind numbers to join downwind, downwind, base and final  The base end of this arrow still serves as useful reminder to maintain the right direction hwne positioning, especially if approaching the a/f from the dead side direction.
No ?