Bouncy Blips

Heard a funny story recently from an airline pilot. Years ago when he was in the Air Force he was an air traffic controller at Ellington Air Force Base (now Ellington Field, where I fly), and those of you who know what a Harrier is will appreciate this... here he was, sitting in this dark room, watching blips on a radar screen. Houston Center calls to tell him that an AV-8A was coming there to land. He didn't know what that was and so he asked his boss. His boss wasn't sure either.

So he's watching his radar screen and sees the green blip moving in from about ten miles out at what seems to be a normal speed. But the little blip gets to about a mile away and slows waaaaaay down. This controller is thinking something is wrong, but he's talking to the guy on the radio and there's no apparent distress, so he's not sure what to make of it.

Now during this last mile in the little blip gets slower and slower until it appears to not be moving at all, except that it appears to be moving vertically, the altitude is changing so that it looks like its just bouncing in place on the radar screen.

At this point the controller is totally confused. He's asking what in the world is going on, how can this be happening!?!?!

But his boss has figured it out and starts laughing. He's read about these Harriers and how these planes can act like helicopters. So he tells the controller to go look outside.

Imagine the poor guy's shock to see this plane just hovering about thirty feet above the runway, spin itself around, and then just plop itself down, and taxi away. That was his introduction to the Harrier- a very strange blip on a radar screen.

I tried to copy some pics of a Harrier from the Internet but wasn't able to get them uploaded here so click on the link to see some good photos-you'll have to scroll to the bottom of the page. http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/av-8.htm