Jeff wrote:
-snippage-


Just curious. How do you think you would "contact" the other plane?



What I was about to do was key the mic and say something along the lines of
"Piper doing maneuvers 10 miles NW of Shelbyille, 51F is a C172 at your 2
o'clock (or whever we were)....." And then maybe explain that we'd pass
behind him if he'd hold course. I realize there isn't anything in the AIM
about this specifically, but it couldn't have hurt!


No one has answered the guy's comment yet ...

Jeff, you can't contact the other plane. You might get lucky and be on
the same frequency as the other guy but there is no air-to-air channel
for such things that people have to listen to by regulation or even by
standardly accepted good practice. So you can talk all you want into the
mic odds are, you'll only annoy the local CTAFs! :-)

There are channels for use (half step above the CTAF freq, ie: 122.75,
122.85) for air-to-air but an arrangement has to be made ahead of time
between the pilots to be there. Which is not the case here.
I don't know how close he was, but by the time we passed behind him, I'd
*GUESS* we might have been within half a mile (at the closest point and when
he was heading away from me).


Until you've seen a few of them, they always seem to raise some concern.
My first CFI said, if they fill up the whole window you should take
evasive action.

KC