rodan: "if you didn't want to do it, why did you agree to it?"
Fair point. Only airing it on here with hindsight really. My general disposition is to say yes to these requests because I don't want to deliberately make life more difficult for people. But in this particular case I think if I'd known in advance how it was going to work I'd probably have suggested that I maintain my altitude but "remain east of xxxx" or something.
Spitoon: "If you say you'll do it please keep your side of the bargain or tell the controller that you've changed your mind, and if you say no it's always nice to give a brief explanation why"
Absolutely. I wasn't suggesting that, having said "roger not above 2000ft till advised" I would then decide 'sod it let's climb to 5000' - even if I did tell the controller that's what I was doing. I was really just mulling over the uncertainties that might spring into the mind of the IFR flight crew.
"If the controller asks you to turn it's not necessarily to identify you". In this case he said "for identification turn right 30 degrees". Not sure if it's different in the RAF but my normal experience when radar-identified on a FIS from a civil controller is that the controller tells you you're "identified Flight Information Service".
Pie Man: looking again at the rules, I had to remind myself that MATS Part 1 says purpose of RAS is "to maintain prescribed separation between aircraft participating in the advisory service", so even if the other traffic is on a RIS from same unit the separation would still have to be 5nm/3000' - or does RIS count as part of "the advisory service"? And the only difference between separation from other RAS traffic and other RIS traffic would be that you can apply 1000ft vertical separation in the former case?
Looking back again at my incident, it would appear that the controller was applying 3000ft vertical separation. I don't recall hearing what he descended the IFR to but 5000 would have been acceptable for his descent profile at that point.
Evil J: different airport and LARS unit, but the other week a colleague of mine was told on first contact with said unit "avoiding action hard right turn multiple departures from XXXX remain clear of XXXX airspace". This was after initial call requesting FIS and MATZ penetration. He may have been squawking 7000 and may have been the only such traffic around but it sounded like panic to me.
I would be the first to accept that as civil pilots working VHF we only ever get to hear less than half of the radio picture with a mil LARS unit - indeed that's part of the problem - but it's difficult to reconcile the times when (a) we hear not a cheep out of ATC and get all kinds of FJs, Hercs etc above and below us with (b) the times we're ordered to do this that and the next thing while flying VFR in Class G on a FIS, for reasons that are not too clear.
As regards range traffic, much of the difficulty you're talking about is due to the fact that range danger areas were for the most part drawn up many years ago and simply aren't large enough to encompass all the range patterns and inbound target runs.
Again, in general I prefer the service I get from civil radar controllers where they will make clear you're on a FIS but will give you very accurate traffic info based on radar, to the military who tend to give no traffic info but will ask you to do all sorts of things to keep out of the way of their traffic without telling you where it is.