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By Anon
Anonymous poster
#1360779
The story was told to me by someone else, it took place few days ago:

Background: IFR flight from somewhere in The South West of Poland, to a place in Germany. Purpose of the flight is to get familiar with turbo-prop airplane we want to purchase, and also to fly it to maintenance base in Germany to get second opinion about few snuggles.

The flight is conducted by Pilot designated by the current owners. The pilot has tens if not hundreds of hours on the type.
Over Czech republic we get heading and level, squawk, etc. The next reporting point is over 100nm to the west. Heading 210.
As the flight is uneventful thus far and the pilot is not too busy, we get into discussion about different parameters of the aircraft, etc. The radio gets bit busy (and in different language to the one used in the cockpit), the captain is progressively turning the volume down. At some point, everyone in the cockpit is busy cross checking different parameters with the POH, asking pilot questions, etc.
I'm sitting in the back.
As we're approaching the next point - someone notices radio has been turned down. That gets quickly rectified and we can hear Czech controller calling us out "Delta xxxx, we have been trying to contact you for 15 minutes, military intercepting aircraft are now approaching your location..." .
The two Czech jets that were approaching us from behind were clearly visible, we never got to see them flying abreast - but I guess it was close.
Since I filed the flight plan before the flight, it was my number that was called by Germans after landing. The issue got quickly resolved over the phone and so far I have not hear anything back about it.

Moral of the story - do check your radio, never let people overwhelm you with questions and always stay in control of the airplane.
All people on board this aircraft are IFR pilots with current licenses and flying IFR a lot. Some are working for major airlines, yet - they all managed to get into this situation. One of the reasons Captain did mention - following the flight and analysis of it - is that on the radio he uses in the bigger aircraft he flies most the time, for an airline - you have to wind the volume knob few times before it goes fully quiet. This particular aircraft is equipped with Avidyne and the volume knob requires less then full turn to mute radio completely.