Crazy idea: how about putting a whistle on the gear
door so when the gear is down it whistles through the
air? Also works
as a gear indicator. I dunno, maybe not a great idea,
but something.

Hmmm...I think about this because in the past year
I had two incidents. One was a person taking photos
just on the edge of a runway, enough so I had to move
to within a foot of the fence on the right to avoid
him. I was in quite a predicament-I could avoid hitting
him and risk injuring myself and a passenger, or hit
him. I avoided him and then had to intentionally ground
loop to avoid ANOTHER pedestrian I had been channeled
in towards. I was too fast to stop safely before him,
and too slow to have excellent rudder control. After
the incident I chewed on him, and then myself. He
agreed to not take pictures anywhere near me again.
I shuddered and promised to scan the runway
better from the back seat and not taxi all the way
to the takeoff spot.

A while later a reporter was covering an event. One
of the glass gliders caught a wingtip on takeoff and
ground looped, with the wing slicing past within three
feet. I was hiding (safely)behind a Ford truck behind
her during the whole event. Not the best view, but
I'm a bit chicken. Not very gallant. She asked me
if I thought soaring was dangerous...

I didn't tell her this, but I thought:
A glider can be a silent scythe of death. It doesn't
have the very loud warning that its piston brothers
has. It is the bitterest irony when those threatened
or injured or killed are the same people who are the
most valuable to our sport.

I'm sorry to hear of this tragedy. I hope we can avoid
this in the future. I don't have a pat answer, but
I hope glider pilots reading this will discuss this
incident at their gliderports.

At 02:30 11 August 2005, Bruce Hoult wrote:
In article ,
'JJ Sinclair' wrote:

You really don't want to argue that the pilot wasn't
operating his
aircraft below 500 feet (not in the act of landing)
and that he wasn't
within 500 feet of a person, do you?

I really don't think you could argue that a touch-and-go
or missed
approach to a runway or airfield in active use means
that you are 'not
in the act of landing'.

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------

Mark J. Boyd