Disgruntled neighbor or dangerous pilots?

Aviation General Aviation
1

Heres an article from GANews:

Disgruntled neighbor or dangerous pilots?
generalaviationnews.com/edit … s&-nothing

Which referenced the web site: www.bloodyredbaron.org.

This is a site that a person that lives near Tracy Municipal Airport (TCY) in the bay area that says pilots are flying dangerously low to his house, and has posted many videos of airplanes flying over his house. According to the article:

Wells believes that some of the pilots are deliberately harassing him.

And

“What is far beyond annoyance and crosses into the realm of true danger are the pilots who buzz our homes just north of the airport at dangerously low altitudes less than 100 feet, and sometimes as low as 60 feet banking and steep climbing literally directly over my house,” he wrote in the Sept. 20 commentary, adding that if he lived in a two-story house “many of these bozos would run right into it.”

Check the videos outand you be the judge of who the bozo(s) is (are), the pilots or Wells. I realize that many of us would love to have a house on the extended centerline of any major airport in the world, but still, judge objectively

2

I viewed several of the videos and it’s a certainty that Wells is the Bozo! Nothing i saw in any of the videos supports his contentions.

3

And, as several of the comments state, he’s using a zoom lens. This makes the aircraft appear closer.

I left a comment on the site to one of the posters. He was actually dumb enough to think that the airport was built AFTER the housing was built. This is not the case! In at least 99% of the airports versus housing areas, it’s the airport that was there first.

4

Post from the site:

“This must be a real challenge. Why would they allow construction of an airport so close to your house.
If they built a new airport by my house, I would move.
Good Luck.”

I thought maybe the poster was poking fun at Mr. Wells, but he was not real clear…

5

I say that as a token of our appreciation (for making the whole world safer with regards to air traffic), we buy this guy and his lovely family a house in St-Maarten, right by the beach.

He’s just a bitter man with time on his hands…

6

Speaking of disgruntled: How come you never hear about a “gruntled” person - just disgruntled. And why doesn’t an usher yet an aviator aviates?

7

Another Chicken Little, conspiracy theorizing, NUT JOB! :unamused:

8

Interesting read… Perception does go a long way.

400 AGL isn’t much space between you and the airplane. Not sure what the average height of a house, which obviously isn’t being considered, but assuming 30 feet for an average ranch home, that only leaves 370.

Add in the apparent perspective from below at an angle and it will seem closer.

Have a noisy engine attached to that plane and it will probably sound even lower yet.

If the plane was 1000 AGL over his house, it probably will be too low due to the noise it makes, so it’s really a no win situtation.

It’s probably the noise of the engine / prop that is making the issue, as I posted in another thread regarding noise abatement, if it was a glider, you wouldn’t be reading about these things as the person wouldn’t care about altitude (out of hearing range, out of mind in this case).

Allen

9

Looks a lot like typical practice instrument approaches to me. Also to note that Tracy is a aerobatic practice area 1 mi radius 500’ agl -3000’ msl. Aerobatics at 500’ would definitely look and sound very close.

10

HA!

An aerobatic box with a floor of 500 ft.AGL.

One of 2 things I can think of:

1.) he lives in an unpopulated area

2.) only helicopters and ultralights are authorized in the box.

He needs to get a life and walk around the mall.

I lived on the ILS centerline, and I do mean centerline, of IAD runway 1R 12 mi. south of the aerodrome. I rarley heard any noticable aircraft niose including trip 7’s, 74s and the occasional 72 just to mention a few.

And that was outside.

11

The only video I could view didn’t seem to be a problem at all, It appeared to be a Piper on final a long way off from the house. I couldn’t even hear the plane. I also noticed that he zoomed in as he turned the cam into the side of his house. NIMBY!

I think the GII owners group should have their annual charity fundraiser/trianing exercise at Tracy, CA this weekend. “48 hours Over Tracy”. Over 100 GII’s without hush kits doing touch & goes for two days and nights. :smiling_imp:

12

Home… Looked at the videos. It streamed crappy at best, had to stop the video and let it download before playing…

Jimminy, I am not a plane spotter by any means, and I don’t know what a plane looks like from the ground when I am 400 AGL when I fly into KMBO, but those planes to me sure didn’t look that low by any stretch of the imagination to be a nuicance to that guy’s neighborhood.

Not only that, the noise level wasn’t that bad either. On one video, it sounded like the pilot was executing a missed approach by the engine RPM increasing and even that wasn’t that terribly bad.

In the four videos I viewed, the plane was no more then a 1/4 inch in the picture in the very beginning before he zoomed in.

One would think there may be a mathmatical equation to figure out the distance of the plane just from a known size like a roof shingle compared to the known size of the airplane to figure out the distance using the November 29th video and pausing it at 6 seconds. The airplane apparent size is one shingle in length and barely the same width.

Allen

13

If you check the map:

maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&g … &z=15&om=1

His house is in the upper right on Kelly Mist Ct. The airport in the bottom left. All runways are left traffic, so 7 and 12 would take traffic directly over or close to his house.

He mentions in this article: tracypress.com/content/view/12034/2242/

changing the traffic from Left to right pattern. As I look at the map it looks like on the surface that may help, but I’m sure there is much more than to changing a pattern than just shooting out a Notam and updating the charts and Airport Facility Directories.

14

Ya. If the airport is receiving federal funds, and few don’t, it’s called an evironmental assesment or even an environmental imact statement if those under the right hand pattern object.

Good Luck

15

“Chickenhawk 123 is on the left downwind runway 7… gonna do a few steep turns - uh, I mean right three-sixties - over Kelly Mist Court!” :stuck_out_tongue:

16

GRUNTLED people just aren’t newsworthy.

17

I can’t get his videos to play right on my computer, but I’ve flown into Tracy a few times in the past couple of months. I’ll have to get my log book out and see if I star in any of this videos.

18

Along the Topic:

Quoted from the Letters to the Editor of the Fredricksburg Times:

In July, a small private aircraft crashed into a subdivision in Florida. Two children and one adult inside their home were killed. Three people on the ground were maimed, with a 10-year-old boy being burned over 90 percent of his body.

In October, a small plane crashed into another subdivision, killing the pilot and 24 people on the ground. Another small plane crashed into two homes in Orlando in July, killing five and injuring three others. In May, two small aircraft collided in mid-air over a subdivision in Ohio, and debris fell into people’s yards, killing three people.

Such needless loss of life occurs weekly thanks to the recreational pursuits of general aviation pilots.

Recently, an aircraft left the Stafford Airport making a noise that sounded like it was going to explode. As it gained altitude and crossed Mountain View Road, it lost power and the engine cut off. It was nearly 10 seconds before the engine was restarted, while the aircraft was perilously close to falling out of control.

Finally, the engine restarted, and the plane made an almost vertical left climbing turn right across many homes, in order to avoid crashing.

The residents of the Mountain View community live with this kind of senseless threat to their lives every day, all for the benefit of the privileged few who use this airport for their own convenience and recreation.

Airport staff have not discussed the incident and the hundreds of other such close calls, and they can do this because they answer to no one. Stafford Economic Development Director Tim Baroody and other Stafford County officials have written off the safety and welfare of residents, all to provide special privileges to their elite friends. What kind of country allows such violation of human rights?

Ted A. Parks Stafford

19

40 some thousand people are killed every year in car crashes and 3-4 million are injured the same way. Don’t even get me started on ladders!

20

Or crossing the street :wink:

Allen