Re: close encounters of the aircraft kind: was Re: [RCSE] High Altitude Glider

[Stuart A. Hall]

I occasionally fly at a farm that is about 20 miles from a local Air 
National Guard facility. They fly their A-10 Warthog training missions 
all around the local area, plus the farm is within the approach pattern 
for Westover AFB (they are very high on approach, no danger). Actually 
lots of my state, Connecticut, is close to airports of one sort or 
another and well within 150 miles of Newark, JFK and Boston.

I had just caught several monster thermals in a row with my 3M Marauder 
and was flying from cloud to cloud with the plane well within sight but 
still pretty darn high. All of a sudden I heard a jet sound from behind 
me and see a pair of A-10's just below cloud height heading to where I 
was flying. I quickly pointed the plane to a safe patch of sky 
perpendicular to their direction of travel as the planes banked in 
unison. My heart was beating very quickly as I nervously porpoised the 
plane to safety. The A-10s made a very large turn (perhaps a 10 mile 
radius) out of my sight and came back over the field a few minutes 
later. They were low enough at this point that I could see the guys in 
the cockpit and the patches on their arms. My plane at this point was 
low enough that my time was divided between two activities - looking at 
the jets and also at my plane below the tree line. My main concern was 
for the pilots and not my plane so I did not get to wave to the pilots. 
I have always hoped that they were looking at me out of curiosity rather 
than not having seen me.

I had not seen planes this low previously and have not seen any since 
after several years of flying at this location.

Bill Johns wrote:
I fly in rolling hill country.  Last season I was out by myself with a 
2M.  I had the plane waaaay up but not too far out and was puttering 
about when I heard a serious sound come up very quickly, I glanced over 
my shoulder and was looking right at a big radial-powered ag plane.  The 
plane was just over the high spots of the hills heading right for where 
my plane was.   I was much higher than he was.  I quickly turned to a 
flight path perpendicular to his and started a shallow dive to get out 
of the area.  I paint all my tail feathers a bright yellow for 
visibility.  I know he saw my plane as he immediately corrected so as to 
go in the opposite direction to my plane.  It was over all so very quickly.

After that I heard him in the area, but he stayed very clear of the 
field I was flying from.

Yet another test of the ol' adrenaline pump.

RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News.  Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]  Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.  Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format