Oh dear seems to me there's a lot of people on here seem to think the radio is good substitute for a decent lookout and airmanship.
To the guy who flys through the Brecons its nice to hear that Gliders not talking to you actually gets your head out of the cockpit and actually loking for other traffic, and its not Glider pilots who expect you to see and avoid them its air law that doe's that.
Really guys we all share the same sky, all encounter the same problems, whether I'm in a glider or a powered aeroplane, I still look out the window, lot of miltary traffic out there not talking on VHF, but I don't whinge about I lookout for it.
The Radio will not save you, see and avoid means exactly that, in the area where I fly, (southern england), there are a substantial amount of military helicopters, very few of which are talikng to a civilian ATC unit, a very busy GA Bizjet airfield again on a seperate frequency and a large commercial airport which like to drop its commercial traffic out of controlled airspace and into the open FIR along with one of the busiest Gliding sites in the country and a number of airfields where non radio PFA type powered aeroplanes and microlights fly from, and without one common frequency between us and sticking our heads out the window we normally avoid banging into one another, its not unsafe to operate in this manner.
One last thing flew from Fairoaks to Lasham once moving an aeroplane for for a maintanence organisation, had to go Lasham-Fairoaks pick up owner Fairoaks-Lasham, a pretty short trip, didn't bother speaking to anyone on L-F leg as vis not bad, picked up owner left Fairoaks, me flying owner right hand seat non-flying, I didn't want to talk to Farnborough, he insisted I did, so made initial call and was instantly put on standby, after a couple of minutes Farnborough put out the call "All staions All stations Farnborough ATC LARS cloising down due to intense controller workload", seems I was the straw that broke the camels back and forced to do it by the guy who didn't want to fly his own aeroplane, I could have just looked out the window operated see and avoid and left the service to those who really needed it.