I've found most pilots wet themselves before another aircraft gets within 200' (unfortunately this protection mechanism only works if they've seen it!). It is actually far less scary to fly close to a static object than to another aircraft.
On occasions pilots in gaggles may get brave and be tempted to carve away some of the margin. This may have contributed to some of the mid airs over the years. Redmond Quinn *********************************************************** ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Hart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia." <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, 17 June 2005 10:17 Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] What do I do? > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > >Gidday > > > >I've known its 200ft since forever, I guess I had good instructors, but-- > > > > What does 200ft look like glider to glider in the air? > > > > > It's three times Alice's wingspan (approximately, as she is 20.5m span) > or a bit more than 4 times a 15m wingspan. This gives us plenty of > airborne 'gauges' with which to judge our minimum clearance. A 15m > wingspan from 200ft subtends a max angle of just under 15 degrees - > which is half of 30 degrees (a reasonably familiar angle). > > I think fuselage lengths might be a better guide, except that fuselage > lengths vary quite a bit and so using this might be a problem. > > It should be a part of training that we get people used gauging > distances. We require students to learn to fly with no instruments so > they learn to judge height above ground in the circuit (from about > 1,00ft on down) and we need to do the same in terms of safe clearance. I > admit that I have not trained students to do this until we get into > thermalling training and we should probably start this as part of basic > training. > > Thinking about this, you can start it on the ground by sitting the > student in the glider and setting up another glider 65m away (pacing it > out should be reasonably accurate) and then rotating that glider through > the quadrants so the student sees the wingspan changing and starts to > get a feel for how a glider looks in a variety of attitudes at the > minimum separation distance. > > -- > Robert Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED] > +61 (0)438 385 533 > Brisbane, Australia http://www.hart.wattle.id.au > > _______________________________________________ > Aus-soaring mailing list > [email protected] > To check or change subscription details, visit: > http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
