On Saturday, July 11, 2015 at 6:20:55 PM UTC-7, SoaringXCellence wrote:
Having watched and flown with F-16s in a pattern, I would guess that they're more like 120 in the pattern.

I'm not sure why we are talking pattern numbers, this mid-air collision was not near the pattern at KCHS, it occurred outside KCHS Class C airspace. And whether the F-16 was actually flying an instrument procedures at the time, actually under approach radar control, etc. at the actual time of the accident is not clear AFAIK (the flight mission was apparently to practice instrument approaches, it does not mean the pilot was doing that at the time of the mid-air, but could have been... that area is part of instrument approaches into KCHS).

For some (better than usual "journalism", but it still has problems) coverage of this see James Fallows article... http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...he-sky/397880/

As clarified there, and by the USAF in other news coverage, the F-16C was out of Shaw AFB en-route to KCHS and it sounds like had not actually yet got to KCHS/executed an instrument approach--but I may be reading too much into that.

I'm not sure why Fallows thinks this collision might have happened in an MOA, local news sources describe the mid-air as happening over Lewisfield Plantation in Moncks Corner, SC, which is approximately 33°9′36″N 79°59′37″W, something like 20 nautical miles outside the GAMECOCK MOA, and quite close to Berkeley County Airport (KMKS) where the Cessna 150 had apparently departed.