The FAA guy had his thumb up his ass. At small uncontrolled field, pretty
much the ONLY thing the FAA can ding you on (besides the beloved "careless
and reckless") is the part 91 rule that, absent official information to the
contrary (i.e. indicated on the segmented circle, published in the AFD,
notamed, etc.) traffic is LEFT.

And how many of us can monitor our home unicom any given weekend and hear
some bumbling fool announce that (s)he is RIGHT downwind for the active?
Almost everybody. And the bumbler is guided, ever so gently (GET A CLUE,
LARDASS, WE'RE LEFT TRAFFIC) into the path of part 91 righteousness.

When I moved to GOO (nee 017) in '75, we too were on 122.8 and it was squeal
city. When the FAA opened up 123.0, three of us in the area moved over and
the squeal was cut by two-thirds. Then with firefighting activity in the
summer at two of those airports who were on 123.0 (Columbia and Grass
Valley) the leftover squeal became critical. So we did a listening watch on
the newly allocated unicom frequencies (google 47 CFR 87.217) on 122.7,
122.72, 122.8, 122.97, 123.0, 123.05, and 123.07 and picked 122.725 as the
least congested of the channels. I haven't heard squeal in two years, and we
are high enough to pick up the Sacramento, Oakland, and San Francisco areas.

Oh, but you love little 122.8 because that's what you grew up with and
learned as a student pilot and it is just too hard to leave? Learn to love
squeal.


Jim



"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...


In his opinion (and, apparently, the FAA's), saying "left downwind" is
redundant, since everyone should know that the pattern is left (or
right, if appropriate) hand traffic. In high traffic areas, the FAA
thinks that omitting this single word will open the over-crowded unicom
frequencies so that other pilots can squeeze a word in.