I never have understood the mentality of civilian pilots who knowingly fly through active MOA’s. That to me is a very arrogant mindset.
Those who Choose not to talk to ATC and blunder through active MOA’s are just plain stupid and really shouldn’t be flying.
They should just make MOA’s Restricted airspace when active and be done with it.
Perhaps they are looking for photo opportunities? Not suggesting that’s a smart idea obviously…
Wow Paul! You would not have liked me. Growing up in southern VA, MOAs were a part of life. We flew and instructed within and through them daily. It was that or don’t fly.
I’m sure you were were at least talking to someone, or were aware of if they were active.
Blowing through an active MOA blindly is kind of asking to get up close and personal with a jet that’s much faster and whose pilot is preoccupied with the whole ACM thing. That seems very dangerous for all involved IMHO.
No. We talked to no one outside of a call to FSS to check the status. There was no point. At the time the Farmville MOA was always active. There was no point talking to Washington Center because there was nothing center could do but say what we already knew, two F-15s were active in the MOA between 300 and 5000 feet. That was a long time ago but nothing has changed since. See and be seen is still the rule that all VFR traffic, civilian and military must follow.
Frankly, I worry much more about the Cirrus pilot trying to shoot a staight in RNAV on a clear and a million Saturday than I do a pair of F-15s flying at 500 knots.
Well, I guess to some extent it comes down to what you are accustomed to. I would feel uncomfortable with that scenario, but the airport I trained at wasn’t situated under a MOA and there was plenty of airspace to operate in without coming into contact with military traffic.
Did you ever have any occasion where you came close to a military aircraft in the MOA?
Yes! On my long solo cross-country. MOA’s were pretty new then. That day the morning haze cut the visibility down to about 5 miles. My instructor made me agree to continous flight following through the MOA or he wasn’t going to sign me off. I checked in with Washington Center and they kept reporting fast movers on a military squawk following on my 6 and breaking off at about a mile. They did that for about 10 minutes and honestly it was both cool and a bit unnerving to my 16 yo brain with limited sensibilities. Since there was nothing neither Center nor I could do about it, I really would rather not have known. I never saw them.
Those guys were my wakeup for school almost every morning. They would fly directly over the house at 200 ft at 7:15 just about every day but Sunday. Before the F-15s, it was F-4s. That was the loudest, most beautiful alarm clock ever made. It was like the sound of silk being torn and played over Iron Maiden’s amp system.
Because I never applied myself enough to get a degree and join the raf. I watch these 24 Yr old kids zooming around in eurofighter typhoons and always think if I had done things differently that would be me. They worked for it and I just didn’t. They deserve it. I didn’t.
So I live my fantasies on dcs and fsx. I’m a flying instructor so it’s not like I don’t fly but I had to work like hell to get there.
But I’m always a little bit jealous when I see one at at airshow or flying above me and think ‘God he’s probably ten years younger than me and smarter and could fly rings around me with his eyes shut’
But my 2 year old son will be there one day. If I can help him in anyway possible he will not be a lorry driver like his dad. I’ll teach him everything I can and hopefully he could be doing it in 2 decades time. I think dcs could possibly help him and if I can teach him to fly solo at 16 he will be far ahead of where I was at that age. Also I love dropping bombs on tanks and dcs is the most realistic way to do that I’ve found… Lol