shouting “have you got him?” and something in his voice made me look around. Right above us, no more than 20 feet away, was another Dutch F5, and I can still see the stencil markings under the fuselage and wings. A bit Top Gun I suppose, but no time to give him the bird. As we were already at low level, there was just a little room to push the stick forward and move out of the way. You see, a navigator was an early form of TCAS, and I had made the mistake of looking at the wrong aircraft. Now this chap in the F5 was completely unaware of my presence, just as in all my other near misses. So, how often had I been flying along, admiring the view, and been totally unaware of an air miss? It is just as well my career in the military was brief. THERE WAS A SLIGHT DELAY WHILE I THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT TO DO, DROPPED THE CUP, AND THEN PUSHED THE SIDESTICK FORWARD FORWARD This, in turn, brings me to the topic of whether or not we are ready for a TCAS RA on a day-to-day basis, and how we train for it. Normally, in the simulator, we are in the cruise and your competitor airline has been told to stop climb/descent at the adjacent level, he says “say again”, and we then carry out a brilliant TCAS RA, because we are prepared for it. In real life, when in the climb or descent, we are also alert to the possibility of a TCAS RA. But how alert are we when in the cruise – honestly? FDM has shown that pilots can be slow to react to a TCAS RA in real life. So, it must be incumbent on us that in addition to avoiding high rates of climb and descent, especially close to our assigned level, we must be alert and prepared to literally drop everything to follow the TCAS commands. And don’t get fixated on the wrong aircraft – the TCAS RA might just be for the one you cannot see. Time for tea? This conveniently brings me to the subject of TCAS, which has considerably reduced the chances of a collision. I was sitting in the airliner on a quiet day on the way to Sweden, in the cruise at FL390 and admiring the view with a refreshing cup of tea, when I heard the TCAS Traffic Alert. A mere two seconds later, I got the Resolution Advisory to descend. Now, what do you do when you have a cup of tea in your left hand – the same hand with which you need to move the sidestick? Well, reader, there was a slight delay while I thought about what to do, dropped the cup, and then pushed the sidestick forward, overcompensating to 2,400 fpm instead of the required 1,500 fpm, and then corrected. There was no harm done, and the subsequent investigation found that there was an aircraft 5.5nm away and the RA was spurious, with the comment that the procedure was carried out in accordance with SOP. Little did the investigator know about the chaos caused by the flying cup of tea. eading about Captain Mike Clarke’s six near-misses in the winter 2019 edition of The Log reminded me of one of my six near-misses, encountered in a short career in the military. We were having a fight over the sea, and I had managed to sneak behind a Dutch F5. My navigator was shouting “have you got him?”, to which I replied “he’s as good as dead”. My navigator, however, kept Learning One member recounts NEAR MISS curve his own near-miss fright By Captain Andy R Brown, Log Board member Learning Learning curve Learning One member recounts curve his own near-miss fright