On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 01:00:33 +0100, John Halliwell
wrote:

In article , Alan Dicey
writes
I can still remember, in the early seventies, coming over a pass into
Teesdale (I think), only to find a Vulcan flying up the valley /below/ me.
It was almost surreal to look down on that great camouflaged tin
triangle, looking like some unlikely ocean ray swimming across the
landscape. I simply had to stop and watch it till it was out of sight.

I heard a wonderful story, no idea how authentic but here goes:

One RAF Harrier squadron had a lot pilots who were also very keen
bikers, when not flying fast and low, they liked to ride the country
lanes close to base very fast. The local police heard about bikers
riding fast and started to set up speed traps. One day they pulled over
the CO for speeding. One Sunday morning a few weeks later, a policeman
was manning one of these speed traps, all of a sudden the quiet was
broken by a Harrier doing 450 knots at 40 feet directly over his head.
The speed gun was making a strange sound, flashed an error condition and
was later found to be un-repairable. The police chief constable wrote to
the squadron CO, explaining the incident and requesting payment for the
broken speed gun. The CO wrote back, saying the aircraft's threat
receiver had identified it as hostile and jammed it, the damage was
unfortunate but they wouldn't be paying for it. He finished the letter
by suggesting that to avoid further similar incidents, the police should
inform him when/where speed traps were going to be setup.

I love this story. So British (a compliment, not a snipe).

There's a similar story, which I think I read in Straight and Level,
about a couple of policemen out on the moors (or something) laying a
radar speed trap for motorists. A Harrier whipped by overhead (shades
of the Falklands penguins) and the policemen, for kicks, acquired it
with their radar. The Harrier pilot unleashed some kind of
countermeasure, breaking the radar, and the local police complained to
the RAF, only to be told that they were very lucky that the pilot had
not pickled off the SEADS ordnance (HARM?) that had pinpointed them
and was begging, figuratively, to be set free.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

"A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all."
Anonymous US fighter pilot