I was doing a training flight from Miami-Opa Locka to Miami International… basically 10 miles north/south of one another.
So I departed Opa-Locka to the west, and then headed down towards MIA airspace on a bearing of around 135 degrees. When I entered the airspace for MIA I was given ATC instructions to enter base left, runway 27.
I was expecting runway 27, but where I got confused was the ‘enter base left’, should I have flown over the airport and then turned left onto base and then left onto final? If this was the case I would have expected it to be an enter downwind leg. Where should I have turned/flown?
How should I have turned onto the base/final leg… attached is a screenshot of the route.
When my approach is blatently headed for a RIGHT base join I do it, regardless of sim ATC instructing to join LEFT base. Never been chastised and always get landing clearance, often well before finals turn. IRL that’s what would happen, otherwise you’d be given different instructions.
However in this case, with multiple runways, you’d be affecting traffic on finals for the others so a safer pattern would be to fly overhead then join a mid left downwind leg to left base, which is apparently almost what you did. In the UK this would be called an overhead join.
Think it’s just a limitation of the current sim ATC; likely easy enough to correct once they turn their minds to it, or maybe Working Title who I think are doing it? (Might have that wrong)
Left traffic means " left hand traffic". depending on the direction of the sidewind or other traffic in pattern, you sometimes are instructed to overfly runway at midpoint and then enter a normal left downwind.
I think this is the point of my post, I am trying to understand what ATC are instructing me to do with that instruction? Where do I enter the base leg, do I fly over the run way and do a loop around so that I enter at the bottom of the base leg?
Just as an after note, heading into a controlled airport last night I was actually instructed to join RIGHT base, which was what I needed - first time I can remember this happening.
But afterwards I checked the airport info and indeed for that particular runway it was a right hand circuit (high ground on other side) so it seems the sim ATC actually issues instructions dependant upon the circuit pattern. As the other direction was a left hand circuit I’d guess each runway must have it’s own pattern direction that the sim ATC uses.
