Mid-Air Collisions

What's with all the mid-air's? We have gone for years without this destructive
monster rearing its ugly head .Now, I count 7 KIA in the last few months. Are
we watching our electronic goodies too much? I try to look up (out) every 10
seconds. Very easy to get engrossed in all the wizardty and to look down too
much and too often. Heads up. Don't be screwing with the GPS when thermalling,
that neat little item your checking isn't worth your life. I try to only play
with the gadgets when crusing and then with a quick peek, every 10 seconds.
JJ Sinclair

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



"JJ Sinclair" wrote in message
...
What's with all the mid-air's? We have gone for years without this
destructive
monster rearing its ugly head .Now, I count 7 KIA in the last few months.
Are
we watching our electronic goodies too much? I try to look up (out) every
10
seconds. Very easy to get engrossed in all the wizardty and to look down
too
much and too often. Heads up. Don't be screwing with the GPS when
thermalling,
that neat little item your checking isn't worth your life. I try to only
play
with the gadgets when crusing and then with a quick peek, every 10
seconds.
JJ Sinclair

Paul,

Thanks for the thorough and objective post. It really hammers home the
necessity of constant situational awareness. Thanks for your honesty.

--
bobgreenblattATmsnDOTcom --fix this before responding

Real good post, Paul. Thank you for your candor.
I remember the day I was following a ship on the ridge at old Vacaville. I was
inside and a little behind, because we were slope soaring and I knew he would
be turning away from the ridge.

Bad assumption, he turned into the ridge. I came sooooo close to a head-on
collision that I had to bank my ship to match the slope of the ridge. He passed
with him 15 feet above me and the tree tops were 15 feet below me.

That 5 second near-miss has been a lasting memory of just what *assumptions*
can do.

The mid-air collisions that I'm familiar with, fall into 3 categories;

1. Distraction (looking at the goodies)

2. Unable to see the other guy (in the clouds, low sun angle, smoke, haze,
etc.)

3. Maneuvering (one or both ships maneuvering)

Enough, of this! Let's not be looking at out toys, too much. Watch out when
working the wispies, call out your altitude or ask the other guy for his. Clear
all turns and give a quick, "JJ's going left".
JJ Sinclair

Paul Adriance wrote:
I guess I'm qualified to comment, at least regarding the recent Seattle area
midair I was involved in.

You are following in a long line of fellow aviators who share their
experiences with the community in the name of safety...

http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/med...ch/default.htm

Some air-to-air specific articles...

http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/med...3/TooClose.htm
http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/med...may03/Bump.htm
http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/med...dec02/wily.htm
http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/med...2/HowClose.htm

There's another way to get into a collision situation.

If you have another glider very close, slightly below and outside you a
thermal you can be in a situation where there are few options. You can't
climb since you have no excess airspeed. You can't descend,or roll out of
the turn without a collision and you are turning as tight as you can without
risking loss of control.

If the other glider is smaller and more nimble and "herds" a larger, less
maneuverable into a tight turn the situation can have you sweating bullets
until he moves away.

Been there. Please don't crowd another glider from the outside.

Bill Daniels

"JJ Sinclair" wrote in message
...
Real good post, Paul. Thank you for your candor.
I remember the day I was following a ship on the ridge at old Vacaville. I
was
inside and a little behind, because we were slope soaring and I knew he
would
be turning away from the ridge.

Bad assumption, he turned into the ridge. I came sooooo close to a head-on
collision that I had to bank my ship to match the slope of the ridge. He
passed
with him 15 feet above me and the tree tops were 15 feet below me.

That 5 second near-miss has been a lasting memory of just what
*assumptions*
can do.

The mid-air collisions that I'm familiar with, fall into 3 categories;

1. Distraction (looking at the goodies)

2. Unable to see the other guy (in the clouds, low sun angle, smoke, haze,
etc.)

3. Maneuvering (one or both ships maneuvering)

Enough, of this! Let's not be looking at out toys, too much. Watch out
when
working the wispies, call out your altitude or ask the other guy for his.
Clear
all turns and give a quick, "JJ's going left".
JJ Sinclair

Dear Paul!

thank you very much for your posting. I have lost a friend a littel over
4 weeks ago in a midair and have thought a lot about why we have an
increased number of mid airs of pilots that fly together on the same
frequency in a team for the entire day and collide close to the finish
or shortly after the decision to fly back home.

I think one of the riskiest things is the trust that we place in our
team partners; especially that they see us if we don't see them in times
of relaxation. Use that dammed radio and inform your partner that you
have lost contact as soon as you have, one day it will safe your life.

I wish all of you many safe flights

Hans

(JJ Sinclair) wrote in message ...
1. Distraction (looking at the goodies)

JJ, while I totally agree with the need to spend the maximum time
looking outside for threats (with the emphasis on "clearing your
flightpath", not just looking at the pretty scenery, beautiful
gliders, etc.), I don't think "toys" such as a GPS, moving map, or
glide computer, are the real problem. Used correctly, they DECREASE
the time spent in the cockpit, compared to the old sectional and
manual final glide computer (prayer wheel), etc. Being lost is not
going to help your lookout for other gliders/airplanes! Knowing where
you are, all the time, and knowing where your alternates are, all the
time, gives the pilot a lot more time to make sure he doesn't get to
prove the "big sky theory" wrong.

The key is to let the magic work unsupervised and only come inside
when information is needed, and only after making sure there is
nothing outside that could be a threat during the time you are
heads-down.

It takes a LOT of discipline to do this - we all want to play with out
nice expensive toys - but it really is a life-or-death matter!

BTW, I learned to fly gliders at Vacaville back in 1976 while going
through Nav School at Mather - it sure was a fun place to fly.

Kirk

Here is some more to add to Paul's excellent post:

Paul and I had flown the earlier part of the day team flying for about
3.5 hours or so. We had worked our way from the local foothills and
eventually ended up about 30 miles away over the rugged snowy peaks at
the end of the Skykomish Valley; and the start of the Stevens Pass
highway. This was pretty good considering the day was somewhat windy
and the building high pressure was starting to affect the thermal
activity.

During our trek we were in constant radio contact: "turning
left.....turning right......reversing course....." etc........Paul had
brought a high end digital camera with him and was hoping to get some
great in-air photos. By communicating very thoroughly, he was able to
come in for some wonderful shots.....at no time was there ever any
concern regarding closing rates or distances because we both were
keenly aware of where we both were and what we were doing.

Once we made it to Lake Isabel the lift above the peaks was consistant
enough to allow is to gracefully swoop along the ridgetops, dive
through the snow covered gaps of Zekes Peak and Stickney Peaks and
generally cavort to our hearts content.

After doing this for several minutes I decided to start heading back
to Arlington. While making the jump to Mount Pilchuck, Paul and I
discussed the options: I was tired and after 4 hours I was ready to go
back home......I also realized that there was a strong possibility of
landing out, there was a good headwind and I would have to find lift
before starting the final glide. Paul however was still going strong
and made the decision to go to the east side of Pilchuck and hook up
with a great looking cloud street that headed back towards
3-Fingers......a beautiful set of 7500' peaks.

So......Paul went east and into the lift, and I went west, into the
blue and strong headwind.

Paul and I communicated our decisions and he said he wanted to fly for
another hour or so....and I said I was ready to head for home.....at
this point we heard Willy make a call.....of course he had to make a
point of using April Fools day, declaring he was on the ground with
engine problems.......I recall giving him a hard time about that when
he laughed and said "nah.....I am at Jim Creek at 4500 and climbing"
Now Paul chimed in and said he was close to 3-Fingers in good
lift........the next few minutes on the radio were really fun;
listening to Willy and Paul as they described their locations and
eventually hearing them say "hey.....I got you spotted" and something
about the glaciers on WhiteHorse.....All to soon it was evident I was
not a player anymore, kicking myself for not following Paul into the
good lift, but also remembering I was wanting to land.....I called out
and said I was probably going to land about 8 miles short at a small
grass strip.......no reply......so I turned off the radio and 10
minutes later had safely landed.

Fast forward a few hours......Ron and Chuck retrieved me with the
trailer. I owed Ron dinner, so off we went to Arlington, trailer in
tow. Upon arriving at the trailer tiedowns we were a little surprised
to see Paul's and Willy's trailers and cars sitting there with no sign
of either glider......the lift had long since dissapated and they were
not back. We were concerned but figured they would come streaking in
at anytime.

While we were ordering dinner, and still no sign of either glider, I
became really concerned and decided we had to do something.......I
called 911 and had the dispatcher send an officer to check out 2
airports that I figured they may have landed at......but the scary
thing was Willy should have come home, he had a DG-400 and could have
motored back, but to console ourselves we figured he made have landed
with Paul so they could plan a retrieve together. About 20 minutes
later the Sherrif called back and said no gliders at either Darrington
or Concrete.........Willy had a cell phone, we knew if he landed in a
field close to home he would have called us, there is no cell coverage
at the 2 airports.....now we knew somthing had gone wrong and I told
the sherrif that these two were indeed MISSING and quite possibly had
suffered a mid-air. Now we had the ball rolling and the next several
hours had us in communication with the authorities and with a couple
members of our club who were also making phone calls to try and figure
out what we could do.

I went to bed that night in a motel close to the airport, ready to
help coordinate with Search and Rescue early in the morning since I
was the last to hear Willy and Paul on the radio, and somewhat
familiar with where they might have been.........I went to bed that
night scared to death that 2 of my close friends may be in terrible
trouble up in the mountains and I did not know what else to do.

Well.......in the morning I turned on my cell phone and heard that
Paul had survived and hiked out of the mountains........and all to
soon we found out what happened to Willy.

This event has ripped a hole in my heart.....I lost a very dear friend
and could have easily lost 2. Thank God Paul survived, and as I grieve
for Willy I'll find solace in knowing he died doing something he loved
to do....with tears in my eyes I end this by saying "Blue skies to you
Willy Otis......You will always be in my memories"

Brad
Apis 199AK

Your description of the accident was very articulate and sobering.

I would like to hear more about the bailout. In particular:

1. What was your approx. altitude (AGL) at collision.

2. How difficult was it for you to exit the glider and how much
altitude did you lose in the process.

3. What was your attitude when you pulled the rip cord.

4. Did you have any problems separating from the glider.

5. What brand of chute did you have.

6. Did you have any injuries landing in the trees.

7. What problems did you have getting down to the ground after landing
in the trees.

8. Did either glider have an ELT.

thx,

Tom Seim
Richland, WA