My 601 is flying great after some recent upgrades.

I'm flying home for the weekend to be with my wife and mutts. I have passed through all of the congested airspace in the California central valley (Travis Air Force Base, Sac Exec & all the other airports in this region) and I'm now approaching the Sierra foothills on my way to Pine Mountain Lake Airport (E45), near Yosemite.

I'm flying an appropriate altitude for my heading (7500 feet), my ADSB receiver is sending data to my IFly and my cell phone and, while I'm still scanning, I start to relax a bit because. I'm in the middle of almost nowhere, from an aviation perspective.

So I take a moment to enjoy the scenery and how beautiful it is on this early evening in the fall.

I see an ADSB alert on my IFly and calmly look at it. Apparently I didn't notice it when it was "blue" but I see it now that the alert level is "yellow". The alert say 8000 feet 12 o'clock. 

Hmm, "let's get some more info, " I think and touch the incoming aircraft symbol.

About the time I touch it it turns to "red". The pop-up window on the IFly restates the 12 o'clock position and altitude and then I notice the airspeed. 320 knots.

Hmmm.... So I look up and what looks like straight ahead is a large landing light that is not moving. It's takes my brain a second or two to process that a very large corporate jet is 500 feet above me with a converging rate of somewhere in the range of 470 miles per hour! Even before I could react he was over top of me.

Five hundred feet sounds like a lot when your on the ground, but in the air, it can feel scary close. I was also concerned about wake turbulence. To be safe I banked and descended another 500 feet. 

Because of the flying I do, and the routes I take, I should be used to this. However, I've never come head-on with another aircraft at this closing rate. 

After my heart rate returned to normal, I contemplated the importance of always flying hemispheric rules (with continually updated altimeter settings on long flights), the benefits of ADSB AND the importance of visually scanning for traffic. If you continually use all three, your level of safety is greatly enhanced.

Funny, but just about a year ago I was more than a little skeptical about ADSB. This is not the first incident since I installed it that I feel it truly helped me avoid a potential problem.

If this corporate jet had chosen this moment to begin his descent into one the airports not that far behind me,  well, it could have been a serious situation if not for the alert from the ADSB.

However, I also learned that with a converging rate near 500 miles per hour, even ADSB may not give enough notice of a conflict, so keeping the  eyes scanning is critical to safety.

I realize the contents of this post are probably something everyone reading it knows already. Still it helps me to remember the lesson I have just been "re-taught" when I write it down.