It’s surprising how quiet an F-16 is when it pulls up alongside you in the air. Granted, the inside of a Cessna is a pretty loud place, and everyone is wearing noise cancelling headsets, but still, for how loud a Viper is on the ground, it’s impressive how much quieter everything is in the air.
I can only imagine how much of a “brown trouser” moment it would be for a pilot just haplessly bopping along, without tuning a radio to GUARD, and who didn’t check his NOTAMS that day to see a TFR zone in his flight path, when an armed fighter crosses directly across his flight path in what’s called a Headbutt maneuver.
Okay, now for the kind of jet noise most of us are more familiar with.