Bill Boyd
Well Known Member
...unannounced, and out of nowhere?
I had a near mid-air years ago. A commuter turboprop came within 100 yards of merging with my RV enroute to the Outer Banks. My passenger's cry of "Plane! PLANE!!!" alerted me just in time to do a hard pull-up and bank as I stared in disbelief at the steeply climbing plane just below our nose, both pilots intently studying something inside their cockpit. I cringed until I knew they had to have passed beneath us, hoping my wake buffeted them enough to make them realize how close we all came to making the evening news.
That memory played in my mind last week as my bride and I were tooling along on her first RV cross-country, to our honeymoon destination in Georgia's Golden Isles. I had some new gear- an iPad mini, DualX170 GPS/ADSB, WingX trial subscription up and running with WX and ADSB radar enabled. We were getting some traffic on the screen- a complete novelty for me, having only flown with a 296 plus steam gauges for years. I was showing my gal the finer points of VFR sectional navigation and how the ADS-B would display some but by no means all traffic around us, with vector and altitude info attached to the returns.
As we passed KCUB headed for KSAV (nowhere near the Bermuda Triangle or the Twilight Zone), I was scanning the horizon for an oncoming target that was showing 10 miles away and at our altitude when Lorri asked, "What about this plane right where we are on the map?" Holy cow- there's a target about 1/8 mile behind us headed the same direction, 300' below our altitude. Make that 200'! That fool is right underneath us and closing! And now there's another one just out in front of us! Why can't I see him?
I rolled us steeply left and right, looking wide-eyed for the F-16's. I knew I had checked TFR's before we launched, and that there were no restricted areas along our route. What the hey?! There's nothing around us but empty air. Then the traffic returns vanished just as quickly as they appeared. (The oncoming traffic 10 miles out was real enough, and we spotted him in plenty of time to side step.)
I finally realized what all my reading about ADS-B (and TIS) had not told me (this is the Doh! moment): if you're within range of an aircraft with ADS-B out, you can see your own radar return on the traffic display, complete with latency and mode-C altitude reporting error.
/Remove cushion from buttocks
breathe
resume level flight
breathe some more
land KSSI
enjoy honeymoon, thankful that the wife enjoyed her X/C and wants to take the magic carpet on future adventures/
File under "Stuff they don't tell you." Or maybe, "rusty RV driver/cool story, bro."
-Stormy
I had a near mid-air years ago. A commuter turboprop came within 100 yards of merging with my RV enroute to the Outer Banks. My passenger's cry of "Plane! PLANE!!!" alerted me just in time to do a hard pull-up and bank as I stared in disbelief at the steeply climbing plane just below our nose, both pilots intently studying something inside their cockpit. I cringed until I knew they had to have passed beneath us, hoping my wake buffeted them enough to make them realize how close we all came to making the evening news.
That memory played in my mind last week as my bride and I were tooling along on her first RV cross-country, to our honeymoon destination in Georgia's Golden Isles. I had some new gear- an iPad mini, DualX170 GPS/ADSB, WingX trial subscription up and running with WX and ADSB radar enabled. We were getting some traffic on the screen- a complete novelty for me, having only flown with a 296 plus steam gauges for years. I was showing my gal the finer points of VFR sectional navigation and how the ADS-B would display some but by no means all traffic around us, with vector and altitude info attached to the returns.
As we passed KCUB headed for KSAV (nowhere near the Bermuda Triangle or the Twilight Zone), I was scanning the horizon for an oncoming target that was showing 10 miles away and at our altitude when Lorri asked, "What about this plane right where we are on the map?" Holy cow- there's a target about 1/8 mile behind us headed the same direction, 300' below our altitude. Make that 200'! That fool is right underneath us and closing! And now there's another one just out in front of us! Why can't I see him?
I rolled us steeply left and right, looking wide-eyed for the F-16's. I knew I had checked TFR's before we launched, and that there were no restricted areas along our route. What the hey?! There's nothing around us but empty air. Then the traffic returns vanished just as quickly as they appeared. (The oncoming traffic 10 miles out was real enough, and we spotted him in plenty of time to side step.)
I finally realized what all my reading about ADS-B (and TIS) had not told me (this is the Doh! moment): if you're within range of an aircraft with ADS-B out, you can see your own radar return on the traffic display, complete with latency and mode-C altitude reporting error.
/Remove cushion from buttocks
breathe
resume level flight
breathe some more
land KSSI
enjoy honeymoon, thankful that the wife enjoyed her X/C and wants to take the magic carpet on future adventures/
File under "Stuff they don't tell you." Or maybe, "rusty RV driver/cool story, bro."
-Stormy