My submission to the Code 3 department of the digest.

Back in the spring of 1988 we were living in Omaha, Nebraska. One Sunday my wife, my newborn son and myself went to a local site called Golden's Farm. Bob Golden has a nice 200' river bluff running along the back of his property that makes for some great ridge lift in SW winds. Bob also has a 2000' grass strip and taxiway cut in a field right in front of launch, that we use for an LZ.

This his day there are three of us in the air (the entire Omaha HG community), staying 100-200' over waiting for the day to develop and the trigger time to hit. We decided to pass the time getting some pictures, since one of the pilots had a wingtip mounted camera, that day. Well, Don (the photog) made several passes tring to work closer and closer (it was a 35mm fixed focus auto everything cam) to get a frame filling shot.The air had by this time started to pecolate with a few bumps and gusts.

Anyway (I'm repeating) I am crossing in front of launch, Don is coming towards me 30' higher and outside with the idea of banking his wing to get me and the launch in the frame (remember we are kind of close to fill the frame). We have been talking on our radio during the setup so we both knew what we were up to. When Don was about 50' away he started his bank/turn towards me, within seconds I knew some thing was up because he seemed to continue to rotate towrds me. Over the radio he said he was mushing. As he came at me I went through my escapes, I had few options. I did not have room to dive under him and miss some power lines at the bottom of the ridge, so I opted not to become a moving target and hope that we would have a near miss.

We didn't.

As Don passed across the top of my wing I felt the collision in the control bar. All my thoughts were on whether we would come apart or turn into a tangled heap falling from the sky. Quickly, we did part. My glider still felt whole put I noticed it was turning towards the ridge. I was just thinking about trying to go around in a 360, when Don shouted over the radio "Pat your going in".

The glider had begun to death spiral. My only though was,"boy this is going to hurt." I grabbed my reserve deployment handle and threw my chute. I don't really remember it inflating, but the glider did go nose down. I could see the face of the ridge approaching as I climbed into the bar.

About 30' from the ridge face the glider started gaining atlitude (entered the strong ridge lift), I though great now I will get blown over the back into the rotor and trees. Luckly, I only got high enough to clear the ridge by 6' or so and has deposited ever so gently in a bush with my glider in the tree behind the bush and my parachute still inflated above me trying to give me another ride.

As you can imagine my adrenaline was pumping, after two dirtbikers helped me deflate the chute I jumped the 6' to the ground and sustained the only injury from this accident. You see I had had a vasectomy the week before and not all of me stopped at the same time when my feet hit the ground. This put a quick damper on my celebration.

The damage to my glider was minimal; a sail repair, some battens and new upper wires. When Don went across the top of the wing his base tube snagged my front upper wire. It pulled hard enough that the rear wire broke, pulling the kingpost and reflex bridle forward, breaking the arrow shats on the battens and in effect creating a 12" high spoiler out of the trailing edge of the sail.

I learned several things from this incident, the most important being that no matter how safe you may feel flying close to pilots that you have shared the air for many hours, sometimes Budda, will not smile on you and then stuff happens. So never underestimate the need for having a _real_ escape plan and when necessary briefing your buddies on what it is. As you could expect I have become very standoffish when flying around other pilots in close quarters.

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