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Black Hawk Encounter
by Sam Blight

I had a fly at Cottesloe last Thursday and nearly paid for it with my life. I was enjoying a quiet lunchtime fly there, as you do, in a fresh west south westerly (17 - 20 knots). I had top landed once and took off again with Shaun Wallace's wing camera mounted to get a few happy snaps before going back to work for the afternoon. During this short flight, the wind began to swing off to the south a bit and the lift band degraded, so I was beating back south to top land.

Still about 100m north of the top landing/launch area, I was confronted by the unsettling sight of an SAS Black Hawk helicopter coming straight at me heading north above the surf line very low. I was only about 20 ft lower I would estimate, and he was about 300metres away and closing fast when I first saw him. Not wishing to find out what it's like to fly through some serious rotor downwash, I side slipped rapidly into an emergency top landing amongst the dunes and bushes and promptly dropped the nose and hung onto the nose wires as the gust from the downwash hit me. I then parked the glider tail to wind, got out and had a quiet shake for a few minutes. While I stopped paying attention to the helicopter once committed to the emergency landing, I can still hear the sound of the rotors approaching, passing and receding during the incident and I reckon there wouldn't have been much separation if I'd been silly enough to stay airborne. Shaun reckons it was at about 200ft. Fortunately no other HG pilots were in the air at the time, but others had been flying there since morning. If I'd been flying the other way, I doubt I would have noticed him until it was too late and would have been waked onto the deck big time. It makes my knees go to jelly just thinking about it!