Well, 67Wing, 'tis a small world thanks to PPRuNe!
I was indeed Polaris 52A, with 52B and 54 in cell behind. Mission 4452 was our mission line in the ATO. We'd been told that, for deconfliction, we HAD to stick to our assigned AAR levels (much lower than normal due to your weight with JP233s and the temperature), but had I done so we'd have been in cloud and couldn't have refuelled you - so I had to find the nearest level where AAR was JUST possible, whilst informing the rest of the cell. There was no point in passing the information to PONCA as he would have needed to find a General to approve it. But I assessed that no-one would have been coming the other way on OLIVE TRAIL! I was flying ZA141, the first VC10K2 in service, but it had recently been fitted with Sky Guardian and a half-decent PFM, so at least anything with radar would have shown up.
Although we'd been allocated a tanker combine frequency, it was 116.7MHz and therefore outside our VHF radio frequency range - hence all comms on Red 4! The same sort of basic error as the lack of a force-wide QNH in the early days, which the air box in Riyadh hadn't NB'd.
My records are equally sketchy, but we'd been briefed to select A/A TACAN on at RV2 -15 minutes. So when the display lit up showing you 87 miles out and closing rapidly, we were all very relieved!
Shall raise a glass shortly to those who were lost.
Last edited by BEagle; 16th Jan 2016 at 19:38.