Marty Shapiro writes:
Richard wrote:
Dylan Smith wrote:
On 2006-04-17, Mike Granby wrote:
So I'm flying IFR down V441 in Florida today, when I hear the
controller who's working me call traffic to a VFR airplane he's
providing with advisories.

Totally unrelated - but about 2 years ago, a friend of mine was flying
home (in a club C172) when the military controller he was getting radar
service off advised him of 'fast traffic' (a Tornado) that was passing
by. My friend made a sarcastic comment to the controller about the fast
traffic (I think the Tornado in question was flying relatively slowly).

A few minutes later, the C172 started rumbling. My friend started
looking around to see what could be making that sound when the planform
of a Tornado appeared in the windscreen, afterburners fully open!

That taught him about making sarcastic comments about fast military jets
to military controllers :-)


Reminds me of a story I read about the folks having their groundspeeds
checked by ATC as a bragging right...until the SR-71 at altitude
requested the same thing. Heh.

That's from the book "Sled Driver" by Brian Shul. He recounts a
succession of requests for ground speed readouts progressing from a Cessna
to a Twin Beech to an F-18 and finally the "Sled".

At the other extreme, I heard a story about a flight
from the Minneapolis/St. Paul area heading west IFR
one night for somewhere in the Dakotas. They'd been
in the air for about half an hour when the controller
informed them that their groundspeed was about 10 MPH
and asked their intentions. The pilot decided make
the flight another day.

[Wouldn't the MTI suppress the target? But let's not
let facts interfere with the telling of a good story.]