"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
gonline.com...
Hmm. I don't see it quite this way. He called the waypoint the wrong
thing, but that's not a lot different than the "onion fields" north of CDW
that might in fact be tomatoe, grapes, or who knows what else.

Huh? No...seems you misunderstood what he said. He picked airport A for
his waypoint, and then identified airport B as airport A.

It's kind of like if I'd picked Boeing Field in Seattle as my waypoint, and
then pointed out SeaTac (the Class B airport a few miles away), claiming it
was Boeing Field.

Had he selected a private airport, and then upon flying over it, correctly
identified the waypoint, but called it a public airport, that would be akin
to what you describe with respect to "onion fields" versus "tomatoes,
grapes, or who knows what else".

He should have called it "road across street from farm with transient
runway", I suppose, but if he did spot the road, does it matter what it
was
called?

He wasn't using the "road" as his checkpoint (which was actually another
airport, not a road). He was using an airport that he did not actually
find, even though he claimed to have to the examiner.

It's an unfortunate way to bust a checkride, as in this particular case it
would have had no significant effect on the outcome of the flight. But as a
technicality, it's perfectly valid, and had the other airport not been
there, a pilot trying to use the private airport as a waypoint may have
flown right past it without EVER having seen it. And it's not like he
picked the private airport knowing that there was a paved airport for him to
misidentify as the private airport.

As I said before, it's a very good example of why one needs to learn at
least some basic things about an airport to be used as a waypoint. In this
case, it's debatable whether the private airport is really all that suitable
as a waypoint anyway (since it sounds like it's hard to distinguish from all
the other rural property in the area), but for sure, a person using that or
any other airport as a waypoint needs to know whether the airport they are
looking for is paved or not.

Since from the air, many airports very similar to many others, it would be
much better to know not only whether the airport is paved, but also the
runway direction, location of any windsocks, location relative to any major
roads in the area, among the many distinguishing characteristics an airport
might have. Even knowing just "paved" versus "unpaved" might not be enough,
but for sure one ought to know THAT.

Pete