A couple of weekends ago I was at Half Moon Bay Airport (KHAF) a
non-towered field near San Francisco, CA. It was a beautiful, sunny,
Sunday afternoon, so that traffic pattern was full. I made calls in
each leg of the pattern, except base and final, because I could not get
a word in edgewise. Mostly, this was due to some people greeting each
other, talking about the airport restaurant and generally getting
chatty on frequency. As I was on short final, about 20 feet above the
runway, some idiot announces his intention to take off, and rolls onto
the runway and guns it. I had to abort my landing. Honestly, I don't
think he ever saw me, even after I when I sidestepped the runway and
we were both in the air together, parallel.

I was incredibly annoyed, but because I saw the whole thing happen and
was able to react, I was didn't think of my life having been in danger.
I mostly just cursed the lousy airmanship all around the airport that
day. [ NOTE: just because you don't hear a radio call does not mean you
are free to not look for aircraft in the pattern. Hell, calls get
stepped on, and radios aren't even required at an airport like HAF. ]

Later, though, I started thinking about how this might have played out
if I had been on an instrument approach. Say I was on an ILS (HAF has
none, but pretend) at minimums, and I had to abort the landing after
the MAP. The weather is way below circling, so I need to get back up
again. It's too late to fly the missed. What can I safely do? The only
thing that comes to mind is to fly a departure procedure like an ODP.

Is that the correct procedure? I'm embarassed that this wasn't covered
in my instrument training, or that I have forgotten it. It certainly
seems that if you are going to fly an approach into an airport that has
an DP, it behooves you to have it out in case you have to abort after
having descended below/past the DH/MAP.

What is the correct way to deal with this scenario?

-- dave j
-- jacobowitz73 --at-- yahoo --dot-- com