Greetings, yes I am in Europe, have been for about 3 weeks with another 4 weeks to go doing some training courses and aircraft certification.
I was only listening to the air traffic control feed because the only English television channel, CNN was on its 2nd loop and I had exhausted just about every other bookmark related to aviation. I occasionally listen to a traffic control in my local area when travelling, it is kind of a way to beat homesickness when you hear Australian voices and places and names that you recognise.
It now seems that this is/was a huge hoax, I have not listened a 2nd time but it is obvious that the original aircraft in distress is the same person broadcasting as wedgetail. Things started to go strange for me when not only did the voice sound same but the quality of transmissions was about the same, wedgetail suddenly appeared without notice somewhere south of the Gold Coast after being scrambled from Newcastle, this is one of Australia's latest and greatest aviation platforms and yet the radio was crap quality, the guy was making mistakes even though he is meant to be fully trained by the air force and so on.
A lot of wasted resources, time and money. I personally feel for the air traffic control operator who did a terrific job under the circumstances and now after the event is probably feeling both cheated and relieved. You could see he invested a lot of himself in these radio calls and this is one thing that really pisses me off, interestingly he was removed from the console shortly after the aircraft "crashed"
If the person who did this is reading the thread, good luck to you! You will get caught and hopefully you will get a huge fine and hopefully jail time.