There’s been an RAF Atlas, Hercules, Globemaster and an A330 flying low, slow loops south of Cheltenham for about an hour this evening.
Anyone know (or wish to speculate) why?
The A330 came up on AIS as MDS21 ZZ331 and it looks like it’s been doing loops over Scotland earlier today.

Setting up a joke

Jamming incoming Jibber jabber at GCHQ

Don’t think any of those aircraft will be looping! Merely in a holding pattern. 8)

Well where they’re based at Brize isn’t far away from there

Pretty sure the Globemaster flew over my place in Cardiff around tea time too. HUGE!

Felt like they were doing laps of my house at one stage – pretty spectacular!

It may have something to do with the current goings-on at Fairford. There was a thread earlier in the week about low flying planes over the Stroud Alpes, which turned out to be a B1 Lancer, although I noticed one hurtling over Ciren last week. The big plane like the one that does circuits above Brize went hammering over Stroud this evening.

Wasn’t there a big airshow in France yesterday? My have popped over to that.

Paris Air Show is on all week but is civil so the military kit won’t be going there.

A few weeks back there was the Osprey as well as Chinooks and the usual transporters circling north Chelt / Malvern area. Probably some big exercise(s) going on. B1 is an interesting spot, there was something that shape moving damn quick over Cheltenham area, two days back.

Never knew there’s a civil version of the F35…

What app should I be using to track/identify these? Love it when they come over.

We live on the edge of Brecon Beacons so regularly get seriously low fly bys. Had about 4 came over around midnight last night which is unusual but it was midsummer night.

Would like to know what they are.

Never knew there’s a civil version of the F35…

yep. popular with footballers unsurprisingly. Balotelli has a yellow one the lad.

What app should I be using to track/identify these? Love it when they come over.

Flightradar24 is good. More or less real time tracking. Not all military flights are tracked of course.

TACAN or VOR/NDB hold for the easterly runway?

Never knew there’s a civil version of the F35…

They’re far more polite when you meet them in person.

Did I miss out the “mostly” from the military/civil sentence? Sorry about that. I forgot to specify exactly the ratio of sectors on show. It’s entirely possible I’ll make a similar mistake and describe RIAT as military next thing you know.

Flight radar doesn’t generally show military stuff.

https://global.adsbexchange.com/VirtualRadar/mobile.html#

That one has a filter you can aply to only show military.

I live next to Cardiff airport as raf St Athan so get plenty of military stuff flying around here

It was a formation forming up for a fly past at Brize for the Annual Formal Reception; a do for local notables.

There was some display on today, there was a flock of small monoplanes went over earlier in two groups, clearly a prop-driven display team, I think there were ten planes, six then four, heading north then they turned west roughly along the route of the A420 Bristol Road.