MID AIR COLLISIONS

Paul Adriance: I missed your original post regarding the accident. Will you
be kind enough to post it again or send to to me by e-mail.

Thanks in advance,

Charles V.

Here's a repost, Charles:

I guess I'm qualified to comment, at least regarding the recent Seattle area
midair I was involved in. More than that, I WANT to comment. Whether or
not this finds its way back to the NTSB, I want other soaring pilots to
learn from what happened so that this unfortunate trend stops now. I'll be
happy to go in more detail for anyone, but at least here is some basic
background and detail relevent to the first post along with some reflections
I've had in the weeks since the collision.


A brief warning: this is quite a long post but, I hope worth the read.


We have a pretty strong core group of guys that fly in the mountains here
and we often get together and discuss the paticular kind of flying we do.
One of our recent discussions was regarding a comment that some pilot's who
soar the Alps in Europe recommend NOT using any GPS type hardware for
mountain flying. It seems to make sense here at least, where we are
consistently in close proximity to the terrain under low ceilings. A GPS
isn't going to help much if we need to follow drainages or canyons to a safe
landing area, and this is very often the case. Our "outs" often take us
over completely unlandable terrain and below ridge and mountain top level.
If you don't know the way visually and have a mental picture of the complex
glide path involved, what happens when your batteries die or a fuse blows?

For this reason and others, I am almost positive neither of us was flying
with any sort of GPS or flight computer. Though Will had a nice flight
computer with GPS and connection for a PDA, I can say with some certainty
that he was not using it because he had requested I help him set it up.
Once Will shuts down his engine, he doesn't have a lot of toys hanging right
in front of his face to distract him. For my part, aside from the electric
Tasman audio vario, I had nothing but a radio and standard mechanical
instruments to worry about.

In the case of our collision, it was probably only a 20 or 30 second
interval between flying together normally and a position where collision was
imminent. We'd been consistently using the radio up to that point and had
been together flying that day for quite some time already. As we flew
about 1000 or 1500 feet under a small line of clouds that were about 2500
feet over a ridgetop, Will decided to turn to the West, I decided to go
straight...and neither of us said anything over the radio for some reason.
We converged as Will had been ahead of me when he turned and came up at
roughly my 9:00 position. Contact occured while sliding into each other
despite our opposing angles of bank. My left wingtip hit the underside of
his right wing with the fuselages in an almost perfectly parallel formation.

He was silhouetted by the sun as it was getting quite late in the day, I was
silhouetted by clouds that were in the mountains behind us. Furthermore,
both of us surely assumed the other person had done something else. We had
been following each other back and forth over the ridge prior to the
collision, so he may have assumed I was going to follow him as he circled.
I decided not to follow him on what I thought was a 180 to the South that
would lead him behind me back over the ridgetop and instead tried to
continue following it North. This under the assumption Will had continued
South after I last saw him turning to a roughly southern heading. Will was
the first to see the danger and I immediately turned to see him only 80 feet
or so off my 9:00 when I heard the radio call. I can't imagine him not
having called me earlier with a warning or position update as he was as
concientious a pilot as any here about keeping radio contact, especially if
something was amiss.

Roughly 30 seconds after seeing him start his turn in front of me I was
freefalling 500 feet over the ground praying my chute opened. Will
apparantly never had the opportunity to get out as I did.

My comments on this situation: The great evil of assumptive flying was our
greatest sin; instead of getting on the radio and saying, "hey, I lost ya
bud" as we had done consistently earlier in the day, we just let our past
situation fill in the blanks. It was inconcievable to me that Will would
end up next to me: we were over a ridge, the lift was in a band, I didn't
expect him to circle... On the other hand, we were 1000 feet over the top,
he probably thought, "I just must have missed him behind me, he surely is
turning with me in this boomer". We didn't continue our judicious use of
the radio for just long enough to get into trouble. Also, we didn't
recognize the inherent dangers of flying in the proximity of other gliders
late in the day due to the sun's positioning and nearby cloud cover. The
ceiling was only 2500 feet over the ridge, that compressed us into a fairly
narrow band of operation. It was well known territory for both of us and
an easy glide back to the airfield, our next destination. This possibly led
to some unconcious relaxation over a sure position. My normally thorough
scanning technique taught by multiple instructors and straight out of the
handbooks and soaring manual was no match for these circumstances.

If you look hard enough, I guess you can see the "chain" of events forming
that is so often cited in aircraft accidents. In our case it wasn't a major
squawk on the aircraft or a poor nights sleep, it was much more subtle,
insidious, and otherwise innocuous changes. Changes like the time of day,
position relative to the airfield and thusly, dinner, our growing level of
comfort about our proximity to each other and trust that the other person
was just as vigilant as we were, that glow you feel inside after an amazing
day of soaring back in the mountains that makes you just want to sit back
and revel over the majesty of unpowered flight... The list could go on and
on.

I even suppose one could argue soaring is inherently more dangerous BECAUSE
you are flying for fun, for the challange of getting to the next area of
lift and reading the days conditions, for the pleasure of travelling
increadible distances with nothing but a bad decision between a succesful
flight and a landout. Someone focusing on all these things and still
trying to track other gliders and aircraft and radio conversations seems
inherently more susceptible to distracations (even just those outside of the
cockpit or in your mind) than someone flying purely for transportational
needs. The fact we can't choose the weather also plays into it, there is
often an urgency to go flying on a great day because you never know when the
next one will come. Here at least, you can often count really great
soaring days in the year on your fingers, so to miss one is to really miss
out. Just so many small details that can suddenly add up to one serious
mistake.

Despite these things, one area of pride I still have is the club oriented
education I recieved. I had many instructors with widely varying
backgrounds who presented immense experience from which to draw on. They
humbled me and forced me into a regimented training program that saw me take
my private check ride over a year after I started with enough time to go
straight for a commercial (And no, it wasn't because I was close to the,
"have you considered Golf?", conversation, they were just extremely cautious
and demanding). Even so, I'm still one of the youngest and newest pilots
here and must suppose this post to be a risky move. My total time prior to
the collision was about 60 hours in 150 flights. I expect it will be a no
brainer for the judgemental types and NTSB, "new pilot, he survived, handy
place to dump responsibility and wash our hands of it". If I didn't know
Will's family as the thoughtful, caring, and unpretentious people that they
are, I would hope for such an outcome so they had something to point at, to
attack and cover the pain of their loss. As it is, the aftermath won't
alter who they are or how they feel and is something I have no control over.
What I do have control over is whether I use my experience to help others or
hide it in order to protect myself. I could never dishonor my dear late
friend by choosing the latter, so here I post...

Paul Adriance

"Vorsanger1" wrote in message
...
Paul Adriance: I missed your original post regarding the accident. Will
you
be kind enough to post it again or send to to me by e-mail.

Thanks in advance,

Charles V.

Thanks, Paul

I truly appreciate your fortitude in describing what is probably the most
traumatic event you have experienced. From your post, I and countless other
pilots have gained an insight of enormous importance. I for one, will pay more
attention to the repack dates of my chute.

Thanks again, Paul, I wish you the best,

Charles