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SkyChicken
Rod Anderson
Harshaw, Wisconsin
I used to fly quite a bit with a fellow teacher who got his
license about the same time I did. It seems that everytime we went somewhere
in an airplane something out of the ordinary happened.
One day we decided to go visit his sister in northern Wisconsin and
he said, "You fly the plane there and I'll fly it back." I agreed and gave
him the map so he could navigate. Well, we were happily winging are way
northward over the south central part of the state, and I suddenly noticed
something large and silvery in color flash past from upper left to lower
right.
I said, "Wow did you see that?"
Dan said, "Yeah,was it a bird?"
About thistime, by craning my neck and looking hard, I could see it was a military jet
diving at about a forty degree angle with puffs of smoke trailing behind his
wings. Ahead of the jet we could see eruptions of dust where shells were
hitting the ground around a big target that looked like a big bed sheet stood
on end.
About this time I looked to the rear of the airplane, and there
was another jet whizzing by on his strafing run. I said to the guy sitting
next to me with the map on his lap, "We just flew through a live gunnery
range!", and pointed the plane at the ground to get the hell out of there as
fast as we could.
Fifteen minutes later, and I was just starting to calm down, an official
sounding military voice came on the general aviation radio channel and
said, "Attention all civilian aircraft in the Volk Field Military training
area: You will refrain from using military airspace during designated hours
on your sectional navigation charts!!"
I said, "Dan, you navigated us through an area we could have
gotten killed in."
He said, "Yeah, but it would have been your fault 'cause you
were pilot in command!"
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I suddenly noticed
something large and silvery in color flash past from upper left to lower
right. |
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