Close by any means..!

[River]

BBC News...

 

"RAF fighter pilot and glider were a quarter of a second away from disaster before back-flip manoeuvre.

 

 

A fighter pilot dodged a fatal collision with a glider by back-flipping his jet just 250ft above the ground.

 

The Tornado – on a low-level training mission – was tearing through a valley at 500mph when the tiny aircraft appeared.

 

With just a quarter of a second to perform the heart-stopping inverted loop manoeuvre, or “bunt”, the Top Gun pilot managed to take his jet just 100ft below the glider.

 

The collision risk was “very high”, he told the UK Airprox Board’s near-miss probe.

 

The Tornado pilot was practising mid-air refuelling and weapons training close to Aviemore, in the Cairngorms, in a sortie out of RAF Lossiemouth.

 

The privately owned slow-moving white DG-808C motor glider, with a 22-yard wing span, was flying mid-afternoon in a circular route from Portmoak, Kinross, in April.

 

Steering clear of the Highland Wildlife Park, the £9.4million Tornado fighter- bomber pilot only saw the glider – which was difficult to pick out against the sky – when it was just 500 yards away.

 

The report said: “He bunted and passed 100ft below it. The pilot noted that he had seen the glider at the very last moment.”

 

The safety of both aircraft was compromised, the UKAB report concluded. And the highly trained pilot avoided a mid-air crash which would have killed them."

 

I take it from this incident report the RAF pilot pushed his stick forward into a negative G dive and pulled up at around the 150 feet mark... Does that sounds about right?

 

 

[nomadpete]

Wow !

 

Don't forget that our defence forces also practice low level ground following flight. Hope never to be a bug on their windshield.

 

 

[Greg Spiers]

BBC News..."RAF fighter pilot and glider were a quarter of a second away from disaster before back-flip manoeuvre.

 

A fighter pilot dodged a fatal collision with a glider by back-flipping his jet just 250ft above the ground.

 

The Tornado – on a low-level training mission – was tearing through a valley at 500mph when the tiny aircraft appeared.

 

With just a quarter of a second to perform the heart-stopping inverted loop manoeuvre, or “bunt”, the Top Gun pilot managed to take his jet just 100ft below the glider.

 

The collision risk was “very high”, he told the UK Airprox Board’s near-miss probe.

 

The Tornado pilot was practising mid-air refuelling and weapons training close to Aviemore, in the Cairngorms, in a sortie out of RAF Lossiemouth.

 

The privately owned slow-moving white DG-808C motor glider, with a 22-yard wing span, was flying mid-afternoon in a circular route from Portmoak, Kinross, in April.

 

Steering clear of the Highland Wildlife Park, the £9.4million Tornado fighter- bomber pilot only saw the glider – which was difficult to pick out against the sky – when it was just 500 yards away.

 

The report said: “He bunted and passed 100ft below it. The pilot noted that he had seen the glider at the very last moment.”

 

The safety of both aircraft was compromised, the UKAB report concluded. And the highly trained pilot avoided a mid-air crash which would have killed them."

 

I take it from this incident report the RAF pilot pushed his stick forward into a negative G dive and pulled up at around the 150 feet mark... Does that sounds about right?

Interesting, I would have thought the military aircraft on-board radar would have picked up the glider before the pilot, unless, for some reason, that wasn' t the case. I was informed by a Hornet and a F111 pilot that there are so many fail-safes in detection of forward and approaching obsticles that they rarely get warning after they visually see something. Those aircraft, I was advised, will instigate its own avoidance action if the pilot doesn't input. I installed a 110 foot tower in the Flinders Ranges (radio repeater) and advised CAA of same (as is the requirement for such things in the landscape) as there was Airforce training in the area frequently. Talking to one of the pilots of an F111, at the time, I was told that the aircraft would ascend at 7,000'/min, on its own, if the pilot hadn't picked up on something up front that the radar did. I was involved in an incident in the NT when I was flying some friends around the falls in Kakadu in a PA28. I was returning to Jabiru airfield at about 700' AGL and had given an inbound call at 15 mls to the East to indicate that. I heard a Military Heavy C130 call to Jabiru traffic that they were 10 miles to the east, low level, tracking south (I'm glad they did). That was where I was. I called them and asked their exact position giving mine at the same time. The Pilots reply was, "look out your port window" I expected to see them to my south and high. Not so, they were to my south allright, but below me. They were right on the trees which were 50 feet high. They had seen me long before they got to me or I had seen them. Ya just don't expect to see a big machine like that down on the trees at 150 knots. It's common in the NT with Tindal, Darwin being military bases. I learnt a lesson!!

 

Cheers

 

greg

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Reminds me speaking to a USAF C130 pilot he described a very near miss when terrain following at 300 knots, two BASE jumpers zipped just past his wing tip, caught them out of the corner of his eye as they passed.