I've been asked by the OP to take this out of the EAA vs AMA thread, and since we're talking about failures and incidents, it seems an appropriate place to bring it up:
Originally Posted by
speedracerntrixie
...there is not a single reported incident that I am aware of a traditional model airplane bringing down a manned aircraft.
Not to hand the naysayers more ammunition, but there was a fatal midair collision in Germany in 1997:
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=58711
A brief summary:
(A Grob motorglider) collided in mid-air with a remote controlled aircraft ("Dingo", wing span 2,40 m and a weight of 10 kg) and crashed into a wooded area. Both occupants of the motorglider were killed.
The collision occurred at an altitude between 702 m and 768 m amsl, which corresponds to 219 m and 285m agl.
The Grob should have been at an altitude of at least 600 m agl.
You can read the full report (auf Deutsch!) at this link:
https://www.bfu-web.de/DE/Publikatio...ublicationFile
I applied Google Translate to some of the relevant paragraphs here:
The organizer put up a poster about the friendship flying of the model flying group Schopfheim taking place on 02./03.97 on the door of the canteen of the Hütten gliding area. It could not be determined whether the motor glider pilot took note of this and was thus informed about the special event.
The weather conditions (according to witnesses: wind from 360 ° with 1-2 kt, visibility> 10 km, cloudless) were suitable for carrying out the flight operations. The position of the sun at the time of the accident causes the motor glider driver to be blinded by the sun.
For the model flying site, a permit issued by the competent authority for ascent lay, among other things. the above Aircraft models before. There was no exact flight height limit for models. There were the requirements that flight operations should only take place within a specified flight sector, the airspace should be monitored by the flight manager and that the model aircraft pilot should be warned when man-carrying aircraft fly into the flight sector and instructed to land or evade them.
A drop below the minimum altitude for cross-country flights by the powered glider and leaving the flight sector by the powered aircraft model could not be ruled out. However, even in these cases, a collision could have been avoided with timely detection and evasion.
Conclusions
The accident is due to the fact that the pilot of the powered model noticed the powered glider too late and therefore avoided it too late, and that the powered glider pilot was blinded by the sun, which was already relatively low at that time, and did not notice the powered aircraft model or did not notice it too late and did not avoid it or avoided it too late.
Relevant to our current discussions, I see this case as a good argument in favor of the FRIA concept, and having FRIA locations marked on aeronautical charts. The Grob pilot violated the lower altitude limit of 600 m AGL for cross country flight in the area where the collision occurred. If he had known about an established flying site he might have paid more attention to his altitude - or been careful not to approach it from a direction where he was blinded by the sun.