Bravo Paul, I am glad that someone who has experienced that
you just have, has the cojones to lay out the events
for the rest of us so that we can all put a little
pride aside and learn a little something. Hopefully
your comments will help the rest of us avoid a similar
experience. I am sure, in this newsgroup, your comments will
draw plenty of conjecture from the enlightened, but
from those of us who don't know it all. Thanks!jeff At 02:12 16 April 2004, Paul Adriance wrote:A few more thoughts that a private email question spurred
me to shaWe were almost exactly at 90 degrees to each others
nose at the time ofcollision. I could probably have looked 45 degrees
to the left and not seenhim in peripheral vision because there was no relative
change in hisposition to mine. Despite our relative locations
though, we had enoughclosure for a serious collision. The other oddity;
though he was bankingaway from me, he was just at his point in the circle
where my flight pathwas tangent to the outside of his turn. Thus he probably
had to look OVERthe high side of his cockpit to see me or perhaps I
was even hidden underhis nose as he came around. Judging by his position
when I heard his callover the radio, he saw me in the former situation,
probably because he atfirst was looking for me in a turn behind him and not
out in front.I realize now that scanning from 100 to 80 degrees
on either side of thecockpit was something I almost never did outside of
turns. When I wouldmake small course adjustments or was flying straight
ahead, I think it wasrare for me to look farther than 60 degrees to the
side. Also, when INturns I think I tend to look around the corner of my
turn more often thanstraight ahead, perhaps Will did the same thing. With
an audio vario myguess is a pilot might stop looking down to the instrument
panel afterestablishing a turn and centering the yaw string.
If somebody was on atangent that would intercept a turn, they might appear
right in front orperhaps under the nose of the glider and stationary.
His DG-400 surely hada few knots over my Libelle, so it may very well have
been one of thosesituations mentioned in a previous post about lower
performance gliderboxing in higher performance glider.Paul