Midair near Gympie, Qld
 

Television news reporting a midair collision between two aircraft at Kybong, about 2 kms from Gympie circuit area this afternoon.

witnesses report seeing wreckage falling to the ground.

no factual details available at this time.

Plane and the glider it was towing, according to this report.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ueensland.html

Photo on abc.net.au

Channel 7 report at: https://7news.com.au/news/qld/two-li...ants-c-8805450

Glider and Aircraft (LSA? with 24-XXXX registration visible)

Condolences to those involved.

A Kappa KP-2U Sova Sabre LSA and a glider collided in midair near Kybong, Queensland.
Both pilots on board the two aircraft died and both aircraft were destroyed.

Great reporting CH7. Steel aircraft, 000 quickly arrived on scene, and the airport blamed for poor use of radios in the past.

Well, after brushing over the incident itself it seems they have to blame someone - otherwise it's not a news story these days.. :rolleyes:

Indeed.

However, this was at Gympie which does have a reputation for people just not using their radios.

That seems to happen everywhere unfortunately.. happened to me at Tyabb only yesterday (a C152 with an Instructor on board, no less!) but seeing me about to join the circuit woke them up.

A quick scan of the RAAus Safety & Accidents page reveals that lack of radio communication happens everywhere - and the further away from larger flight training centers it seems the more likely it is too.

Radios ? …media reports…

“…We saw two aircraft spiralling out of the cloud to the ground…”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-...gion/101633670


I suspect it were aliens done it..:hmm:

PC, Admit to being guilty. Having a check out in a Super Cub with an instructor having not flown fixed wing for some time, doing circuits on a dirt cross runway and he hopped out after being satisfied, did a few solo and during rollout on one noticed a SAAB had landed on the main bitumen runway, never heard him, and obviously never saw him until it didn't matter. Never checked the radio set up after the instructor hopped out was probably the problem, long, long time ago.

Having a check out in a Super Cub

.. how did you find the full flap miss from the flare ?

Pilots might do themselves a favour by reminding themselves of the circumstances in which serviceable VHF is not required to be carried and used by pilots of other aircraft.

What’s the point of having a radio if you do not transmit in the circuit?

If you don’t have a radio it’s a bit hard to transmit…

My point is that everyone should be alert to the risk of no radio aircraft, particularly in Class G. (The usual ‘no radio’ aircraft has a radio but it’s inadvertently tuned to the wrong frequency.)

Certainly, transmit and listen out with intent, but neither should replace the Mk 1 Eyeball. The two pilots were 80 and 77 respectively. It would be fair to say that 20/20 vision was likely a fond memory.

in short, they were just plain unlucky, it’s a big sky and they were the only two in it at the time.

These sort of collisions are going to happen occasionally for various reasons. Having a good visual scan especially in the area around airfields will help, as with radio and apt procedures, but it will still happen when things align the wrong way. You can mandate costly transponders with ACAS fitted which will also possibly reduce the rate, but not stop it entirely. Lets face it, we spend billions on road safety and the road toll continues to rise steadily year on year with population, which shows the return on spent defenses has a very small effect on collision fatality rates. People just find somewhere else to collide or just not follow the rules, you can't bubble wrap the whole world. We have to remember this is no different to a high speed road collision with similar results, how they got to the position where they co-existed in the same space at the same time, we may never really know. Also radio is not some panacea that will fix this, a good proportion of mid air collisions in the USA occur in Controlled airspace, within visual range of the tower with both aircraft radio equipped.

PS I'll just clarify I mean the extra billions spent on road safety in the last 30 years or so. Obviously policing actions vs drunks and other illegal driving has had a marked decrease in fatalities back in the 70s and 80s and continuing. But the continued push for zero road toll is ultimately ridiculously costly and unattainable. Things like the installation of median strip barriers everywhere and ridiculously low speeds on open roads. Just costly with very little impact on the overall toll.

With the digital control of most radios and all of the electronic flight bags everybody is using, your radio should automatically change to the correct frequency based on your geographical location and altitude.

This is not rocket science and the XCOM radio could do this 18 years ago... this eliminates pilot error from 95% of the circumstances of being in an area on the wrong frequency.

What is rocket science is trying to workout where the frequency boundaries are. Back in the day they were clearly marked on a map.