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Traffic reporting

Yesterday the weather was beautiful. For various reasons, I decided to knock off work early, head out to the airport, and take advantage of it.

Something that I had wanted to do the last time I was flying was to visit another airport, but the weather was marginal and I decided against it. Yesterday was a different story. I headed north toward the Arlington airport, tuned in the CTAF frequency, and listened to traffic. It was somewhat busy, which wasn't surprising given the weather, and the fact that it's a much larger airport than Harvey Field.

I circled around the airport with a radius of a few miles to familiarize myself with the area a bit, notifying the other traffic of my position as I did so. The last time I'd been there was years ago during my flight training. I then decided to perform a touch and go so, as I was circling around south of the airport I announced I would be heading around to the west to enter the 45 for a right pattern to land on 16. As I was approaching the point where I planned to enter the 45, I heard another pilot announce that he was over Lake Goodwin and was entering the 45. I didn't know where that was (though I do now) but I assumed it was one of a couple lakes visible to the west of the airport. The thing is, it was also west of my position and I worried if I followed my originally planned course, I would be cutting right in front of him.

So I looked over at my iPad which was showing traffic information from my Stratux ADS-B receiver. I located the aircraft in question and, sure enough, he was pretty much where I thought he was. If I had followed my plan, I would have been cutting in front of him, and quite likely we would have gotten, shall we say, uncomfortably close. So I kept heading west for a bit longer, then turned around and came in behind him. It worked out rather well, I was able to spot him and maintain a good, safe separation between us.

If I hadn't had the ADS-B traffic information available, I probably would have done the same thing, just to be on the safe side, but it provided me with a level of situational awareness that I really appreciated. I think it's already more than paid for itself and would highly recommend that all pilots pick up an ADS-B receiver and tablet if at all possible.

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