A few days ago, I was flying around the pattern at my home airport. After about a dozen touch and go's, I was about to do a full stop landing and put the airplane away. There wasn't much in the way of other traffic; one other airplane had departed the airport about 10 minutes earlier.
I was calling out each leg of my pattern on the CTAF. During my final go around, I heard a 172 pilot call out that he was back taxiing on the main runway. He back taxied and then pulled into the run up area while I was on down wind. I called out my down wind, base, and final turns. Just as I approached short final, I'd say less than 1/4 mile from the runway, the 172 pilot calls out that he is departing runway 26. However, he is not lined up on the runway; he is still in the run up area.
At this point, I make the erroneous assumption that he sees me, and that he is intending to pull onto the runway just after I land. WRONG!! At the last minute, he pulls out onto the runway right in front of me. I was able to abort my landing, pull up and turn safely to the right, and return to the base leg area, but it really rubbed me the wrong way that he never looked to see if anyone was on final. There is no way he looked because I was so close with landing light on, he could not have missed me.
After a pointed radio transmission from me, he said that he was departing IFR and was on the clearance frequency, not on the CTAF, during my transmissions.
My lesson leaned here is to never assume anything. I believe very strongly that the other pilot was more at fault here, but I did have the opportunity to simply broadcast that I was on short final before he entered the runway, and for whatever reason, I did not do that.
I was calling out each leg of my pattern on the CTAF. During my final go around, I heard a 172 pilot call out that he was back taxiing on the main runway. He back taxied and then pulled into the run up area while I was on down wind. I called out my down wind, base, and final turns. Just as I approached short final, I'd say less than 1/4 mile from the runway, the 172 pilot calls out that he is departing runway 26. However, he is not lined up on the runway; he is still in the run up area.
At this point, I make the erroneous assumption that he sees me, and that he is intending to pull onto the runway just after I land. WRONG!! At the last minute, he pulls out onto the runway right in front of me. I was able to abort my landing, pull up and turn safely to the right, and return to the base leg area, but it really rubbed me the wrong way that he never looked to see if anyone was on final. There is no way he looked because I was so close with landing light on, he could not have missed me.
After a pointed radio transmission from me, he said that he was departing IFR and was on the clearance frequency, not on the CTAF, during my transmissions.
My lesson leaned here is to never assume anything. I believe very strongly that the other pilot was more at fault here, but I did have the opportunity to simply broadcast that I was on short final before he entered the runway, and for whatever reason, I did not do that.