That part of your response puzzled me. You've piloted 172 and maybe 150s so you should know how limited the visibility is in those things. Limited forward in level attitude, pretty good down to the sides, nonexistent upward and aft. I remember only too well having to bank back and forth to see what my wings were hiding while I was transiting areas with high traffic.
The Viper has way better fields of view than an slow-moving, low flying high wing bird. Nonetheless, I am sure they'll blame the dead guy.
And that means you are doing a good scan. . .like you are supposed to. My point stands.
“The Viper has way better fields of view than an slow-moving, low flying high wing bird. Nonetheless, I am sure they'll blame the dead guy”
F-16s have great visibility but they are still subject to LOS issues, the number one cause of mid-airs. A non-moving dot means you are on a collision course, be the non-moving dot being straight ahead or off-set. A non-moving dot is hard to see, especially small dots like small aircraft. A larger dot means a larger aircraft and that means the larger dot can be seen earlier (and further away) than a smaller dot.
Right now we don't know the circumstances of the mishap. Assessing blame is not appropriate at this time.
The mishap investigation will do their job. Fairly and without bias. Especially the military investigators. Speaking from personal experience investigating mishaps, we seek truth as we do not want to ignore facts that could prevent another mishap.