U.K. near-midairs

I'm aware of one airplane/glider collision in the UK
not with 4 miles of the gliders base. A piston single
cruising at about 140 knots ran into the back of a
std cirrus on a staight glide. If I remeber correctlythe
glider pilot was probably killed by the aircrafts propeller.
I think the airplane pilot survived.

I'm also aware of one in the UK and one in the USA
where, although near the gliders base airports, both
involved transiting powered airplanes - so not 'landing
related'. In both cases the powered airplane removed
the outboard few feet of the gliders wing. Both gliders
landed safely, both airplane pilots were killed.

Some years ago, as part of a discussion with officialdom
about proposed increases in regulated airspace, I did
a calculation that suggested that incidents that one
might expect an airplane pilot to report as a near
miss (which I reckoned was passing within 500 feet
vertically and 300 yards horizontally of another aircraft
and not seeing early enough to take avoiding action)
would occur about 1000 times more often than actual
collisions.

At 20:30 25 November 2004, Mark James Boyd wrote:
Peter Seddon 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...ull.html#18860
0


e.g.,

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
--

------------+
Mark J. Boyd