TRAFFIC ALERT! TRAFFIC ALERT!

....Skyhawk XXX. Traffic is 12 o'clock, two miles, altitude 7600, closing.
Recommend turn left 30 degrees immediately."

My buddy (we'll call him CJ) rolled into a hard left bank and added some
down-push to the yoke when a glance at the altimeter told him he was at
7,500.
"XXX, traffic now one mile."
With the wing rolled up about 60 degrees, CJ saw the opposing traffic go
by at 2, then 3, then 4 o'clock. Separation then was probably 1/2 mile or
more. He could only identify the other aircraft as a high wing single,
tannish in color, make unknown.
He keyed the mike and said, "Joshua, XXX, traffic in sight, no factor."
"Roger, XXX, resume normal navigation, maintain VFR."
"Roger, resume normal navigation, XXX. Thanks for the head-up," CJ
replied as he added throttle to regain the 400 feet he'd lost and turned
back toward the east to recapture the 358-degree course line on his
yoke-mounted GPS.
Leveling off at 7,500, CJ contemplated calling Joshua Control and asking
if they had the tail number of that yahoo he'd done the aerial dance with.
Then came the epiphany. There it was, right in front of him. The altimeter
was nailed at 7,500 and the DI was right on the bug set at 358. CJ was the
yahoo.
If you've ever flown along the east side of the Sierra Nevada, you know
the Owens Valley squeezes down to a narrow route with 12,000 to 14,000
ridges to the west and the 10,000 to 14,000 White Mountain range to the
east. Down near Owen's Lake, R-2505 owned by the Naval Air Warfare Center at
China Lake makes the east side even closer. It is not uncommon for
horizontal separation to be less than a mile.
Flying northbound out of IYK (Inyokern, CA) to BIS (Bishop, CA), CJ had
been initially tracking 005-degrees. When he rounded a high terrain feature,
he jinked left to head to BIS direct. By then he'd dialed in the elevator
trim for practically hands-off level flight. The winds were dead calm except
for the usual rivers of air flowing out of the deeper canyons causing some
negligible burbles. The nearest cloud was somewhere out of sight and the
boundary between sky and mountains looked like it had been carved with a
razor blade.
I'm not trying to excuse CJ's lack of attention to details and the fact
that his course change required a corresponding change of altitude. He blew
it. The incident took all the fun out of the flight and after doing a 180
course reversal, CJ took the airplane back to IYK and parked it for two
weeks.
The day after the incident he sent an ASRS form in to report his dumb
mistake with the hope that it will help in the future.
Things could have been bad on that Tuesday morning except for an alert
ATC at Joshua Approach and the fact that CJ always requests flight
following. Oh, one last thing, CJ did descend to a lower when he crossed the
jink-point on the way home.

Go Fly!

Casey Wilson
Freelance Writer
and Photographer