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Had two close calls in 1979-1980 when flying Jet Provosts at Linton The first was a close one with a Bulldog head-on when I dived through a hole in some stratus with a base os around 2000 feet Agl during a solo radar to visual. Which occurred about 5 mile North west of Linton ( not instrument rated )and so neededto stay clear of cloud. The Bulldog was I guess scud runningstaying beneath the cloud staying visual with the ground and heading forLeeming . My I pulled up to to stay visual al with the ground somewhere in the vicinity of Easingwold doing about 250 knots and as the hole was quite small the cloud prevented me from seeing the Bulldog until I was levelling off beneath it I was heading south west the Bulldog heading north east to follow the railway track between York
and Leeming and we passed by on opposite headings at more or less the same level. All I can Romberg is I bright landing light and and to helmeted heads swivelling. Round mouths open as we flashed pasteach other very close neither of us had time to take avoiding action and it was over in a flash but a minor change in our flight paths could easily have resulted in a mid ai r I kept the incident stum and didn't report it as an air Miss as I didn't want to expose
my lack of good airmanship and draw attention to myself whilst still a very junior sprog pilot under training and I was concerned that Prince Andrew then u/t at the RN ETS might have been flying the Bulldog and I hadn't read the notams about Purple Airspce!
My second close call was on a solo low level navexwhen the cloud an viz were dropping as I was flying north over the North York Moors and I had a close shave with the Billsdale mast or more accurately with the guy wires that supported said mast?
I survived both and spent a happy year at Linton accumulating 160 hours on J P's of both types happy days indeed
Madbob