I remember when I was a fairly newly-validated controller at Eastern Radar(civil),when a Trident reported on frequency,having turned left at GABARD ,on centreline of UA37,en-route for DANDY,climbing to FL330 ,and said "we've just had a close encounter with a Fairchild A10 ! looked at the radar,and saw that there were 3Mil store- dots waiting at MC6 on the FIR boundary,with the tote board showing FLs 260,270 & FL280,but the blips were 10 miles west merging with that of the HS21 ,which had it's own store-dot,correctly displayed on the tote.climbing to FL330. I asked the pilot how many he had seen,as there were 3 of them,and did he want to file an Airmiss ? Whereupon I was chided by my boss,who just happened to be standing next to me (not plugged-in & not validated),saying "you shouldn't have said that".No Airmiss was filed,but talking later with the RAF,I think there had been a late-handover from Dutch-Mil of the 3 A10s inbound to the hold at Thunder,? for Bentwaters/Wood
bridge.
All this probably sounds like a load of gobbledy-gook to any-one who has not served at a JATCRU,but that's how we did it back in the day !
Just remembered another incident involving an A10,when I was still U/T.It was working Eastern Mil somewhere in the vicinnity of UR4,and had an electrical problem,whereby each time the transmission switch was keyed,the gun fired !
Yet another A10 memory. I think there was a mid-air involving an A10 and a Cessna sometime in the 80's the A10 flew away,not sure about the Cessna.I was flying around the area on the same day.
Last edited by ex82watcher; 25th Jan 2020 at 12:43.
Reason: spelling