Midair Warning

This South Carolina midair reminds me a lot of my incident last Oct 29, 2014 near Inyokern, CA and China Lake. While gliding off from the Sierras eastbound after a final flight of the season.. at 2800agl I hear the roar of a fighter. The Eurofighter (at least that's what I think it was) crossed over me 100ft vertical... zero horizontal southbound at perhaps 250kts. I very well could have become a statistic and news story myself... "WX" in a Discus 2A

Quickly, I checked my PowerFlarm for the jet's transponder PCAS signal and found... NOTHING! At the time my glider was not transponder equipped.

Minutes before, I'd contacted Joshua Approach to check on a small piece of restricted airspace being crossed that is normally closed. It was "cold" this time, so I switched off frequency. The problem was... I had errantly grazed the larger R2505 restricted area by 1/4mile and noted at the incident time I was just leaving it. The encounter occurred 5nm SW of China lake just outside the tower Class D. So, my decision was to not communicate with FAA approach control and report the near midair.... instead, ruminate on this for a few days.

Two decisions came out of this encounter: 1) write up my NASA safety form and submit it (it was acknowledged months later by NASA) 2) Install a Mode S transponder (Trig T22 - now installed 2015 flying season). I don't know if having a transponder would have helped... but it might have... especially if I'd stayed on frequency with Joshua Approach. I already know that fighters have no TCAS and rarely use their radar for aircraft collision advisories.

Considering the cash I have on hand just sitting there for retirement... it seemed like a very good idea to install the transponder for my own self preservation... and the preservation of the sport of soaring.

Walt Rogers WX