Glider pilot reported an airborne conflict; and questioned the practice of C-17 aircraft flying thro...

Narrative:

I was flying my glider in the 'drop' area where we tow gliders and a C-17 flew right through the area at my altitude less than a mile from me. Fortunately I saw it earlier before it turned to cross through the area. The area the C-17 came through is a known high glider traffic area (glider symbol on sectional chart) where gliders are towed to begin flights. There were several of us in the air when this happened and at least one glider was closer than I was. Since this happened; C-17 traffic has repeated the same route right through this area; most recently last week when we had over 30 gliders flying. It is not a safe practice for the [military] to run low level C-17 missions right through a known high VFR traffic area.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Glider pilot reported an airborne conflict; and questioned the practice of C-17 aircraft flying through the glider release area east of EPH at 4;000 feet.

Narrative: I was flying my glider in the 'drop' area where we tow gliders and a C-17 flew right through the area at my altitude less than a mile from me. Fortunately I saw it earlier before it turned to cross through the area. The area the C-17 came through is a known high glider traffic area (glider symbol on sectional chart) where gliders are towed to begin flights. There were several of us in the air when this happened and at least one glider was closer than I was. Since this happened; C-17 traffic has repeated the same route right through this area; most recently last week when we had over 30 gliders flying. It is not a safe practice for the [military] to run low level C-17 missions right through a known high VFR traffic area.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1363793
Time
Date	201604
Local Time Of Day	1801-2400
Place
Locale Reference	EPH.Airport
State Reference	WA
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Sail Plane
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Person 1
Function	Single Pilot Pilot Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Private
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 35 Flight Crew Total 2800 Flight Crew Type 2000
Events
Anomaly	Conflict Airborne Conflict
Miss Distance	Horizontal 4000 Vertical 0

Glider pilot reported an airborne conflict; and questioned the practice of C-17 aircraft flying through the glider release area east of eph at 4;000 feet.