Avoid head-on collision? Forward facing LED strobe?

On Wednesday, August 15, 2012 11:35:18 AM UTC-7, 2G wrote:
I had two near misses flying at a place where the Big Sky theory should be working at its best, Ely, NV. One was the closest I have had outside of a contest. Anyone interested can download the IGC files at:



http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0...l?dsId=2567554

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0...l?dsId=2567342



We were both flying near cloud base at the same altitude in opposite directions. The closing rate was 235 kt. The other pilot saw me about 3 sec (22:52:38), or about 1200 ft, before collision and turned to avoid me (I was checking my position on my map and looked up as he was passing me).



This got me to looking into high intensity LED markers. We all are aware of those used by emergency vehicles; they can be seen in bright sunlight at a long distance. I was thinking of mounting one inside the cockpit of my DG400 in front of the instrument pod. I would have to modify the flash circuitry reduce the rate (thereby reducing power consumption). One potential source is:



http://www.extremetacticaldynamics.com/



The cost is a small fraction of a FLARM, and will work with non-FLARM equipped aircraft.



Tom

Firing off a high intensity strobe inside your cockpit is likely to be extremely distracting to the pilot due to all the canopy reflections. You can try with a decent size photographic flash gun to get some and see how bad it is. In my DG-303 cockpit I would often wear darker trousers and shoes to avoid canopy reflections, so I don't expect this to be a workable mounting location. But mounting LED strobes at the wingtips and pulling wires down the D tube in front of the spar should not be hard. There are already one ASH-31Mi flying in the USA with factory fitted strobe options.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sbKdSa52sw

Darryl