I knew of one GA/glider accident over a gliding site, which sounds like WR's example, but not the other. Without more details it would take me ages going through old reports to find out for certain.
If Rustle and WR are both right, that makes 4 power/glider collisions in my 35 years of gliding (rather than 3 as I thought), including 1 glider tug/glider, the Rockwell/Cirrus I mentioned, and these two.
None in cloud.
I have no more wish to encounter something in cloud than anyone else, but it is the least likely source of collision, for power or gliders, based on density of flying things in types of air/where most things are/actual accident statistics etc.. I think I am more likely to have a collision in VMC than in cloud, because most gliders and GA is there, and we know that the eyeball is only partly effective. I have had far more close calls with other gliders at the heights we normally fly than with power in class G. So has every other glider pilot I have ever discussed it with.
If transponders and TCAS-type solutions were universally available and the power and package problems were solved, I personally would have one. As I have written before on similar threads, the glider (old, wood, no water ballast - a Ka6E if you want to know) I was flying until last July was already at maximum weight with its existing battery and instruments, and its panel was full. No way to get a transponder in.
My new one has a hole in the panel ready for a transponder, I await the CAA-inspired LAST with eager anticipation, and I am working on the battery storage problem.
It will do nothing to help significantly until there is a TCAS-type solution in every GA aeroplane. Once every glider is squawking, ATC will switch them off when they see over 1000 gliders in southern England, sometimes as many as 40 in one thermal. Transponders are mandatory in Holland, and it is mandatory to switch them off under the Amsterdam TMA because they clutter the ATC screens too much. With Mode S, ATC will selectively "switch off" their reception rather than making the gliders switch them off, but the effect for ATC will be the same. Only TCAS will pick them up and take away one source of conflict.
If anyone seriously thinks ATC could today cope with 1000 gliders all telling their positions, constantly changing heights and directions, and sorting out potential conflicts either with the other gliders or with passing GA in class G, please try to get at least 10 ATCO's onto this thread by random selection (i.e. not pre-biassed one way or the other) of whom at least 8 agree that they could handle it.
Last time I called Essex Radar, to warn them that they were working a powered aircraft round Stansted zone in class G who was telling them he could see no gliders, straight over Ridgewell gliding site, towards me over Haverhill, they would not talk to me when I tried to tell them I was manoeuvring in his 12 o'clock -- too busy. That was just one glider trying to communicate. You really think they could cope with say 50-100 in East Anglia, several hundred from Lasham/Booker/Dunstable etc., several hundred more from other clubs?
Chris N.
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