"chris" wrote:
Aircraft can be incredibly hard to see, believe it or not.....

In this case, perhaps it is possible that the tow-plane was in a blind spot
where the Rans S-7 pilot couldn't see him? If one assumes a plane on a
collision course appears to hold roughly a steady bearing, then the tow-
plane would have been visible to the Rans pilot several degrees below the
horizontal (the tow-plane appeared to be climbing as it passed in front,
left to right) and somewhere off to the right - the cowling or camera(!)
blocking the view of the other plane. And then there is all the ground
clutter the pilot in the higher plane has to process to see anything lower
that also happens to be nearly stationary with respect to the scenery.

So (and this is all speculation of course!) it seems to me the tow-plane
pilot might possibly have had the better view to "see and avoid" - since
there were no less than two planes above his altitude that he was heading
toward.