you know you are close.. when you can hear the other powerplane go by you..
and you have not seen it.. and when you do find him after he's past.. you
realize that the sun angles as he approached you.. he never saw you either..

BT

"Mark James Boyd" wrote in message
news:41a63818$1@darkstar...
Peter Seddon peterdotseddonattiscalidotcodotuk wrote:
"Gliders in the U.K. were involved in 10 near-midairs

The difference between a mid-air and a near-midair is
certainly an interesting topic. While in contact with ATC
in busy airspace I've frequently had jittery airline FOs
call me as threatening traffic over a mile away. I'd
guess if you're an airline guy and you see ANY aircraft,
and it wasn't on your TCAS, you'd just automatically call it
a near-midair.

In the US, I'm not aware of any ACTUAL midair collisions between a
glider and non-glider that are more than 4 miles from an airport.

I know of lots and lots of talk about near-midairs, and significant
pressure by the airlines to require transponders in more
ways. Can we blame them? The FIRST mid-air could result
in hundreds of deaths...

So there hasn't been one yet, and it's very hard to tell
how close we've REALLY been to having a glider-airplane midair
that wasn't very near an airport traffic pattern or approach.
I'm guessing this is trivial, and requiring transponders
in gliders is a solution looking for a problem.

Have there been any actual airplane-glider midairs in the UK
that weren't takeoff/landing related (within 4 miles of the airport)?

in the second half of last year, safety investigators
said recently, noting that newer models fly at high
altitudes without transponders and are hard to see,
both visually and on radar...."

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...ll.html#188600


e.g., http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/3763766.stm

Perhaps spam can pilots should look out of the window more often!!

Another possibility is a radar reflector installed in the glider.
These things are much cheaper than a transponder, and would give at least
some info...

I'd love to see if my local boating supply shop has one that would fit
--

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Mark J. Boyd