At 01:00 07 May 2005, 5z wrote:

John Sinclair wrote:
Oh yeah? I was driving hard for the finish line at
Ephrata, 1/2 mile out, 500 feet and 145 knots when
I almost nailed a PW-5 at 500 feet doing an estimated
60 knots. All happened so fast I had no time to react.
Luckily I went just over him. Another gooood reason
to employ the finish cylinder, especially with sports
class machines in the contest.

This exact same situation will happen with the cylinder...

You have a conservative glide for 500' + margin at
the edge of the
cylinder while flying your Lingus III. For the last
20 miles you've
been flying in lift streets, so at 3-4 miles out from
the edge, you
have Mc set to 9.9 and still high. The Guy in the
Bowlus is putting
along at max L/D and aiming for 500' + some margin
as well. Somewhere
out there, you'll be passing him like he's going backwards.
Granted,
the collision will be a bit higher, so maybe there
will be time to bail
out safely.

-Tom

Tom, I was responding to OC's statement that this situation
will never happen in the finish line, so I gave an
example of it happening. Sure it can happen in both
gates.
JJ