Interesting he had a transponder!!

Like Fred said moving the Reno approach routes 5-10 miles around Minden
would protect 90% of the sailplane traffic at Minden.

The 10% left would be pilots crossing the airways momentarily leaving
on cross country to the north of which would be about 5% of the 10% who
fly north. To the south the heavy metal is usually in Class A by the
time cross country pilots start getting to altitude above 15000ft.

The typical XC flight profile starts by getting on the Pinenuts around
9000ft at Mnt Seigel topping up to 10-11K there. Move to the south
edge of the Pinenut range. Climb there to 12-13K then push on south to
Desert Creek Peak or the PineGrove range which is usually the first big
climb of the day. This is about 70km from Minden and the Jet traffic
from/to Reno is usually all in Class A in that area. no transponder
required!!

Al


Fred wrote:
Some good thoughts in all this exchange of ideas. Thanks to posters
(and others) for some good suggestions.

Some answers from what I learned today:

The ASG 29 was transponder equipped. I did not find out yet if it was
turned on or off. If it was turned off, that might be bad news for
Hirao.

Hirao told me he was thermalling to the left, banked over in a pretty
steep turn, and saw the Hawker when it was just about to hit. The only
injury he sustained was what looked to be a minor cut on one arm from
being dragged behind the 'chute. Had the Hawker been five feet lower I
think it would have hit him dead-center.

Hirao spent the day in the Pine Nuts looking at the wreckage. The two
Hawker pilots were pretty shaken up: one is in hospital and the other
was too for a while.

I have not talked to Minden Airport administration today (too busy
talking to the press), but I want to respond to the poster who thought
the airport's management might try to shut down soaring. I believe
there is pretty good awareness here now just how important soaring is
to Minden, and how important Minden is to soaring. Let's withhold
judgement on this particular issue for the time being.

I've fielded three calls today from people who insist we need to
install XPDRs. Two of the callers tried to enlist my support for such
a movement. I'm opposed to it. The fact that this glider had a
transponder shows that it is not a panacea. I know, he should have had
it turned on and everything else. For some reason he did not. And how
many of us would make the same decision if we had a mandated XPDR,
either because the battery was weak, the XPDR out of calibration, or
whatever?

Most glider pilots are techies to one degree or another (just look in
our cockpit!), and it's easy to reach the conclusion from yesterday's
event that a technical fix for this problem is the best way to go --
mandate XPDRs. This strikes me as counter productive because of cost,
actual use, interoperability, etc. And if we all have XPDRS, then
we'll all rely on the technical gadget instead of flying smart.

I told one or two interviewers today (non-pilots all, who probably
don't know what a transponder is but wanted to know why the glider
didn't have one) that there's another fix and it's quicker and cheaper
than mandating XPDRs: recognize that this is a world class soaring site
and route the airliners around it. If bald eagles lived in the Pine
Nuts the airliners would have to avoid the area, but for some reason
the presence of a dozen sailplanes between 12,000 and 16,000' over the
Pine Nuts every day in summer doesn't impress itself on the folks who
decide how to route commercial traffic into Reno. Put them ten miles
east and ten miles west -- a change that would add about 3 minutes to
their flight -- and this conflict wouldn't exist.

I've briefed hundreds of pilots on the arrival routes into Reno and
I'm very familiar with them yet I've still looked down on commercial
airliners descending into Reno. If you're going to go where the lift
is over the Carson Valley (and who among us will not), you're going to
find yourself flying in shared airspace . Our choices are to make
ourselves more visible (electronically or otherwise) or stop sharing
the airspace. I for one believe the Carson Valley is a national
treasure to the soaring fraternity, and we ought to limit (I didn't say
totally reserve) access to it. We who fly here are pretty comfortable
with the power traffic -- low and high speed -- that shares our
airport. It's the guys passing through at 250 kts on the way to Reno
that we live in fear of, and yesterday's event brought it into focus.

Fred