Parowan midair?

Some facts that might temper some of the speculation he

The collision happened about 75 miles north of Parowan over
mountainous terrain. This area is very low population and the risk to
people or structures on the ground was minimal. The nearest airport,
Fillmore, has been under construction and its status was unknown to
the pilots. The next nearest airport with a decent runway was Beaver,
which is only 20 miles or so north of Parowan. If I had been flying
south with a damaged but controllable glider, I probably would also
have opted to keep on to Parowan, as the ASH 26 did. (He calculated
that he had lost about 15% of performance and could still thermal
reasonably well.) There were many more people at Parowan (Beaver is
usually deserted) and much more chance of getting rapid assistance in
the event of a landing problem.

The Ventus pilot reported at this morning's meeting that, with the
benefit of hindsight, he probably should have terminated the task and
landed. I've polled a few competition pilots, and they are divided
almost equally between those who would carry on and those who would
land with an apparently undamaged ship.

There is no evidence of careless or reckless flying by either pilot -
it is likely just one of those events where their position and speed
reduced the pilots' visibility until it was too late. Neither pilot
saw the other until just before impact.

The FAA inspected both gliders today. The Ventus had two very small
compression marks in the nose that did not affect structural
integrity. The Ventus was thoroughly gone over by an experienced
glider repair guy, has a clean bill of health and is back in the air
and on course as I write this.

We may be unable to figure out exactly what happened, but a reasonable
guess is that the nose of the Ventus impacted the wing of the ASH 26
somewhere near midspan, pushing it down hard. This increased the
aerodynamic load on the wing to the point where the structure failed
five feet from the tip.

Mike the Strike

(Parowan weatherman)