This is curious as like all things in british bureacracy it takes time for
stats to be reported and given that the AIB has only just released the
results of 2003 It must be that that is referred to. If so then as usual
there has been a slight case of exageration as there were only 8 airprox
involving civil gliders in 2003 in the uk - 3GA, 1 GA heli, 1 glider vs
glider, 1 Civil, 1 milatry & 1 unknown ? (ufo??). But there were also 3
military gliders who filed airproxes 1 vs Military the other 2 GA. and had 2
Airproxes filed against them. This was out of a total of 181. Also note that
I am not sure that the aib differentiates between gliders and hang gliders.
The biggest total was unsurprisingly Military who claimed the top two spaces
with 18 airproxes against themselves and 18 vs Civil. The worst class
overall was military who had 65 airprox filed against them with GA a close
second with 50. ( Civil Gliders only had 2 airprox filed against them and
one of these was by another glider pilot)
full report at
http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/423/Pages%...%20BK11web.pdf see
page 7 for summary table
I have yet to see a Light aircraft take avoiding action - I suspect they are
concentrating on the instruments and gps far too intently. The only time I
know I have been spotted is when I have been thermaling near ATZs and heard
complaints to the local traffic management (tower/radio) that I was actually
in the ATZ when I was a good 3-4+ miles clear. I think the only time power
pilots are looking out the window is on Final aproach and then they get a
completely false sense of prospective. I would suspect our wingspan may have
something to do with it as they they think we are smaller thatn we actualy
are and thus get the distance wrong.
As for the altitude comment given the usable airspace in the UK is sub 7k ft
and mostly sub 5k ft I dont see that anything has changed with the newer
models this was well within reach of pre-glass gliders.
"Jack" wrote in message
om...
"Gliders in the U.K. were involved in 10 near-midairs
in the second half of last year, safety investigators
said recently, noting that newer models fly at high
altitudes without transponders and are hard to see,
both visually and on radar...."
http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...ll.html#188600
e.g., http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/3763766.stm