T o d d P a t t i s t wrote:

I've had situations where I hear piston traffic coming from
behind while in cruise. I'm never quite sure if "throwing a
wing up" helps me because it makes me easier to see or hurts
me because it makes my impact cross section larger for the
oncoming aircraft in level cruise. I've always been
inclined towards the "it hurts me," but not with any real
conviction one way or another.
--
T o d d P a t t i s t - "WH" Ventus C
(Remove DONTSPAMME from address to email reply.)

In those situations, I've always found that ducking my head and
slouching my shoulders to assume the nearest thing to fetal position
possible in a glider cockpit was comforting. Not sure what it does to
the probability of an impact though :-).

In all seriousness, I have in the past been fairly careful about flying
along those Victor airways that I know to be primary approach corridors
into our local area (ie. New York). Whenever I've been in one, I've
tended to do what Kirk does, which is to make a slightly more than 90
degree shackle turn every few minutes to both provide a visible surface
and to see what's behind me. In retrospect, it's probably not an
extremely effective maneuver since the timing would have to be just
right to have any impact (or, rather, not have any impact). Just the
other day, I had a 40 mile final glide, level for the most part between
4,500 and 6,500 MSL (pretty rare here in the East, but it does happen).
That was a long time to be more or less invisible to a rapidly
approaching Bizjet if there happened to be one...

Erik Mann
LS8-18 P3