[Tim Hancock]

About 15 years ago while flying to the Sun/Fun Fly-in in Lakeland Florida in my little Grumman AA1B, we were about 45 minutes from Lakeland when a glider tow plane appeared about 75 yards off our nose. He pulled high and right, I pushed down and right. No problem, but very odd that neither of us saw one another until that point. I looked down right after and saw a couple gliders on the ground at a small grass strip we were flying over.

About 7 years ago I was leaving a local grass strip fly-in in my Pacer with my wife and kids in the plane. We re-entered the "empty" pattern and did a low pass, after climbing out and banking left to depart downwind, the windshield suddenly FILLED with blue and white. It was an old ex military pilot who I knew that was just arriving and he had seen us and decided to swoop down and pull along side to wave hello. He misjudged his diving turn and in his low wing Grumman Yankee, he could no longer see us as he dove down on us from behind us high and left passing within feet or inches of the nose of our airplane. He never saw us as he missed us by what may have been inches to 20 ft or so. My wife (who lost her first husband in small airplane crash) positively lost it and went hysteric. My kids in the back never knew it happened. Folks on the ground saw it and were horrified. The old geezer (who was a friend) got a serious talking to my myself and many other local pilots over the next several weeks and I have not done a "buzz" job again with family on board.