See and Avoid

Plane Tales

It’s the summer of 1971 and Helen Reddy is singing about hiking down to the canyon store to buy a bottle wine and having such a good time. I have no doubt that the nine prominent Salt Lake members of the Fishy Trout and Drinking Society returning from their deep sea fishing trip were feeling equally relaxed as they boarded their flight back home from Los Angeles. They were getting onto a Hughes Airwest DC-9, Flight 706, the forerunner of Capt Jeff’s beloved Mad Dog and Angry Puppy, belonging to a new regional airline purchased and renamed by Howard Hughes. A little before them, a U.S. Marine Corps F-4B Phantom II, Bureau Number 151 458, departed Mountain Home Air Force Base in southwest Idaho, bound for Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada…. and so the story starts!

A Hughes Airwest DC-9

A U.S. Marine Corps F-4J Phantom II,

An ANA B-727

A JAF Japanese built F-86F Sabre

The B-727 and F86 tracks

The flight paths of the DC-9 and the Marine F-4

The F4’s position as would be seen from the DC-9 cockpit

The DC-9’s position from the F4 front cockpit

The eye’s Fovea Centralis, the small area of the eye’s retina that can detect fine detail

Various TCAS displays

Images under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to Richard Silagi, the U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation, Michael Bernhard, Hunini, the NTSB, the USN and U.S. Defense Imagery.