Me in a DG-303 10+ years ago thermalling a handful of miles south of the Panoche VOR in California. An area of convergence along the local low-ranges that causes some great soaring. Lots of higher-level traffic come in over that VOR heading into KJSC but normally not a lot of lower level stuff.

It's scattered clouds and I'm getting up near cloudbase at 6?k feet or so. As I come around a turn I see a C150/C152 cutting through my thermal circle.. 100' or so away. Going the opposite way to me. Two POB, I think I can make out an instrument hood on the pilot. I expect it is a training flight flight inbound to the VOR. I was looking and had not seen the Cessna at all. How do you not see a lumbering C150? The background pattern of mottled clouds helped make that hard. Who knows how well the instructor was looking out, or monitoring the student.

My DG-303 glider already had a transponder, that incident lead me to get a Zaon PCAS.

Years later I in the Mendocino mountains in Northern CA I had a fire bomber (P2 Neptune ?) fly close to my thermal circle. It was not working any local fires (we are very careful with Fire TFRs and traffic when they are live), it was just transiting the area, nowhere near as close as the C152 I had found the firebomber with a scan after the Xaon went off and watched it pass by. OK a Neptune is a lot larger than a C150 but the Zaon working exactly like I hoped it would was impressive. BTW that Neptune flew right though the start gate area for local contests... had it been a busy day things could have been worse.

And close in different ways...

I was flying out of Minden the day of the ASG-29 (with transponder turned off) / Hawker midair. We were coming back from the north, so not close to the middair, but landed our Duo Discus as the lead search helicopter was leaving to look for the glider pilot. We checked but nothing we could do to help and my grim expectation was the glider pilot was dead--utterly amazing that he survived. That incident and some of the confused reposes to it about UAT technology got me more interested in the technical aspects of transponders, ADS-B and FLARM.

Then there was the day I was going to fly with Hal Chouinard but I could not make it so Hal went to a different glider port, and Hal and Sean Boylan were killed in a glider-towplane middair. We were talking about it at that time, but PowerFLARM became available in the USA some time after that fatal mid-air.

There are many more close encounters and near middair collisions. Be safe out there.

On Friday, May 10, 2019 at 12:07:25 PM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
OK, prior to transponders in gliders, I was flying over South Park, CO
at the highest legal altitude.Â* A Citation jet heading for Buena Vista
descended over me passing just in front.Â* I recall clearly his wheels in
the gear wells.Â* Had I thought of it at the time, I probably could have
read the brand name on the tires.Â* Very unsettling.Â* Still it was quite
some time before I installed a Trig 22.Â* It had not been invented at the
time of my close encounter.

On 5/10/2019 10:47 AM, wrote:
The Transponder chatter on other threads got me to thinking about who’s got the closest near-miss? Thought I’d kick it off with my incident over 40 years ago. I was flying my homebuilt wooden sailplane over Mono Lake, Ca. Cursing south at 16000’ and 60 knots when I spotted a 4 engine jet below and to my left. Our flight paths were going to intersect, but he was a good 500 feet below me. Two seconds later it became crystal clear that it wasn’t a 4 engine jet, it was a 4 pod jet with 8 engines and the B-52 was climbing fast! Too late for me to maneuver,I’m doing 60 and he’s doing maybe 360, and I didn’t want to throw my belly to him. I just sat there thinking I had a front row seat to my demise! As he passed just under my nose, I could clearly see the copilot reading his checklist! I’m sure they never saw me, but I sure as hell saw them! I figured the wake turbulence was going to tear my little Duster to bits, so I tightened up my parachute straps. Nothing! Guess the turbulence all went below and behind him. How far can you see a man reading a book? I’ll lay claim at 50 Feet!
Let’s hear your story,
JJ

--
Dan, 5J