Oh yeah forgot bout that!
The alps thing was a right buggers muddle & might serve some people here.
Heading downwards towards a swiss airport IFR (visual in VMC conditions) through the mountains, ATC ask if we would mind moving over to the north to let jet traffic through, we agree as long as we can have vectors due to approaching cloud cover & likeliness to lose VMC if sent north. So we get a vector & we clarify the level & grid lowest safe vs the route safe we were planning to use if VMC became unliely. Atc said level was okay. we then get vectored all over the joint rights the lefts left again then rights, (didn't have GPS). We now thoroughly confused as to where they're sending us and where we goingbut thinking its okay ATC have us.
Shortly followed by ATC saying traffic believed past you, lost radar contact with you resume own navigation. Oh **** moment hits as we now request to climb as we in cloud &
trying to determine where they've put us in high ground. We ask them what our last known position was & told they'd lost radar on us about 10 mins prior, but hadn't told us.
Anyway about the same time we burst through the layer of clouds in the climb skimmed the top of some fir trees & bellied in on a ridge line heading uphill, much to the shock of us & the goaty things enjoying their lunch before being rudely interrupted by a pa28 tilling the field.
Obviously ATC has got a lot better since then, but the pilot vowed never to give up situation awareness control completely to ATC again
