Sorry to butt in on this interesting thread but I feel this might be a good place to remind people that "Mig alley north bound" (and also south bound past Waddo and through the 'gap') is the frequent stomping ground of a busy little yellow air ambulance!
Averaging 3 trips a day, most of them involving a field landing and t/o in the fast jet corridors and then an 8-10 min transit (at 500ft) we vertically cross and recross the FJ band an awful lot. Can't do anything warning wise about the short notice ad hoc landing and t/o locations but the general 500ft transit is a decision made after three air proxes (1999-2000) These all occured above 500ft.
At 500ft, in this area of intense mil and civ activity, we generally have just one type of traffic (250 ft low level mil) to look out for. 500 ft keeps us under the busy mil instrument patterns, and mostly clear of the gliders (eg Syerston) GA traffic, Sandtoft, Sturgate, Wickenby, Fenland and the traffic from a
multitude of farm strips.
Our eyeballs are on stalks, we make full use of TCAS with range, bearing and azimuth voice alert and the mil ATC are really helpful. We haven't relaxed one little bit and we always expect the unexpected!
For example: the other day, descending through 400ft, shooting an approach to a HEMS site in the middle of the congested area of Newark, a fast jet 1000ft avoid area, a Cessna type civ (non squawking, so no TCAS alert) passed directly
under us at an estimated height of 300ft!
.