Scary stuff! Were you in radio contact with ATC? I know it's not
required but it can be helpful in some circumstances. For example, I
was flying above Salt Lake City Class B back in May in my Stemme (with
the engine running) and in contact with ATC. As I neared the north
boundary, Approach Control asked me if I could maintain my altitude for
a while longer so they could launch a group of airliners underneath me
along my course line. I agreed and watched (on my Flarm/ClearNav)
several airliners climb underneath and exit the Class B in front of me.

On 8/7/2017 8:11 PM, Steve Koerner wrote:
This past Saturday my flight out of Estrella took me about 10 miles NW of Tuscon class C at 11,200 ft with my Trig transponder on and blinking replies to radar. I was northbound at 90 - 100 kts. I observed an ADS-B target on my PowerFlarm display and on ClearNav display coming directly on a collision course with me from my 5 o'clock. The target was climbing rapidly and at a rate that my assessment was that he'd reach my altitude at just about exactly the wrong time. After observing the situation for maybe 10 or 20 seconds with no change, I decided I'd better do something. I made a hard left turn and dove off to the west. After he past my stern, I resumed my northerly course and watched the airliner zooming on up -- never making any adjustment to his flight path.

If things had been working as I'd thought they should, he would have been vectored around me. It seems he wasn't. Were it not for PowerFlarm's ADS-B In functionality, I'm guessing there might have been some spilled cocktails when the jet did a TCAS response. I filed a report with NTSB.

I'm thinking one message here is that we all need ADS-B out so that we are front and center visible in every cockpit going forward. As I understand it, we're at the cusp of having glider reasonable hardware options for ADS-B out. I'm thinking that round about 2020, nearly nobody with an engine will bother to look out the window anymore. We'd all better be in the system; if we're not, we're going to be more vulnerable than we have been.




--
Dan, 5J