Up close
"We all feel this way when we have our first experience of being up close and personal and I see no problem with Owen sharing it."
I agree!
I've had my share of, "WTF is he doing there!"
I was nice and high one day - up where the air is rare and I was showing somebody how to barrel roll (a maneouver not best practiced near the ground!). During the inverted portion, I had a good look around and there 1 000' beneath me was a brace of Stearmans. This was in the open FIR so no drama - but how they hadn't seen me as I was silhouetted against a light blue sky, I'll never know!
However, what really grips me is when the airspace has been NOTAMED. In the National Aeros championship a couple of years ago, I was doing my stuff in the box, when the Chief Judge radioed "Break, break - traffic inside the box!" I shoved everything into the left hand corner until I could see the traffic. Just nano-seconds ago I'd been where he was -there fat, dumb and happy was a S76 helicopter right above the runway that was box centre! The driver - for he was no pilot, had his head down like he was reading, he was wearing an open necked, short sleeved white shirt without epaullettes and had two pens in his top right hand pocket. One might have been a pencil! If I'd only had guns fitted!
A previous year, a different contest site, duly Notammed! Out of a loop, full smash, pull to the vertical at 180mph and up we go - a little bit of right rudder as we slow down and when the ASI needle goes off the clock and the little bit of string on the wing starts going slack - full left rudder, fwd and right stick. Just as I pivotted at the top, not more than 100meters away is the T tail of a glider!
It hadn't been seen by anyone on the ground and it scared the sh1t out of me!!