I find comments like this interesting - what is so implausible about this? It’s just a bit of radio chatter, nothing amazing happens, just a funny anecdote that a pilot tells when speaking to an audience.
Maybe because it’s a polished story that he told over and over? Maybe one of the planes was an added embellishment to make the story longer?
The last part is the most plausible- that they would do an unnecessary speed check as a joke to tweak a pilot of a different armed service.
>I find comments like this interesting - what is so implausible about this? It’s just a bit of radio chatter, nothing amazing happens, just a funny anecdote that a pilot tells when speaking to an audience.
The original story has an SR71, Navy F18, multiple general aviation on the same frequency. This doesn't happen and won't happen. The military has their own frequencies, their own ifr paths, and their own air traffic control.
That's not to say the military planes cant go to GA frequencies but the story is entirely false.
That's an interesting question. I'm not a pilot, I haven't spent a lot of time listening to pilots talk, and I have no specific thing to point to that is definitively impossible. I have no reductionist explanation.
There might indeed be a core that was embellished. If so, then I think it was overdone.
Real things that happen can be unbelievable; I've had the experience of telling a true story that people completely refuse to believe. But this story is believable to many, so it doesn't seem to go in the same bucket.
Stories that get repeated a lot get tweaked along the way, eventually to their detriment. If something was originally a good story, then it's easier to make it worse than better.
I've spent many, many hours talking to ATC and other aircraft. I don't know if the original story is true, but it's more or less believable. First off: I absolutely, 100% believe that pilots would do this. These are precisely the kinds of shenanigans one gets up to in the air.
The detail that makes this story not quite work for me is that it has civilian and military aircraft on the same frequency. That's now how it works in real life. They will talk to the same facility, but civilian aircraft use VHF and military aircraft use UHF. Coming into a certain dual-use airport we would often hear the ATC side of a conversation (tower transmitting on all its freqs simultaneously, which is normal) but we'd never hear the F-15s, for example.
I suppose, though, that it's possible that the military aircraft in the story switched over to the VHF frequency after hearing the ATC side of a hilariously (to them) slow speed check. I know at least some military ships have VHF capability, having talked to a few myself. Whether it's typical for the particular aircraft in the story to have VHF radios though, I don't know.
It always sounded so fake to me. Even if someone proved it did happen.
That's not because I don't think pointy planes are cool! I went to a school with an F-104 lawn ornament.