My motivation for all this is that this investigation is likely to
produce just slightly less upset than if it were a 121 carrier involved
and will spawn lots of debate of all qualities about who should be able
to fly where and when and with what equipment. I would like to think
that the investigation of such a sensitive event would be handled by
highly qualified personnel operating impartially. The way this prelim
report is written does not give me confidence that the investigator is
up to par and/or that other invisible forces are not at work.

I have a transponder installed, it has been verified to put out a
strong signal, and like Doug Haluza carry enough batteries to sustain
Manhatten during a blackout. Almost exactly one year ago at a contest,
while thermalling on the edge of a Class C airspace, the glider on the
other side of the thermal (we were the two at the top) was passed by a
commuter descending through the cloud bases way too close for comfort
(I could hear the turboprop loudly). My guess is 50 feet from the
other glider and 200 feet from me. We had been circling for more than
a few minutes and my transponder was going R R R R Reply continuously.
We were well below cloud base when it happened.

Was their TCAS inop? Did the ATC have slow moving 1200s filtered out?
Did they just igonore the TCAS and/or ATC? I was never able to find
out. After the other discussions relating to reasons why conflicts
occur with IFR traffic even with operating transponders in use is very
worrysome. And the specter of some half-baked solution coming out of
the Minden incident is not conforting.

I think as a community we need to make it clear we expect the best on
all sides from this investigation early on.

wrote:
Quebec Tango wrote:
Jim,

Would you agree or disagree that it is unusual for a preliminary
accident report to contain such a direct statement about the
interpretation of the FARs (or anything else)? This seems to me to be
pretty far out of the mainstream of the SOP for investigations.

The statement seems uninformed at best, and tempts me question the
overall qualithy of this investigation process.


I agree, that's farther than I would ever go, but I'm not NTSB.

One correction to my earlier statement regarding enforcements, if an
FAA enforcement case goes all of the way to an NTSB law judge (a small
number of them make it that far) it becomes public record that you can
read at ntsb.gov.

Jim