A large multi engine aircraft has been flying in clear skies above me all morning. Not appearing on flight radar app so I assume it is military. The aircraft is at high altitude and flying in massive sweeping loops, taking about 10 mins to go round each loop. The contrail look almost like a spiral.

Apart from the obvious purpose of spraying chemicals to subdue the masses, what (non conspiracy) reason might there be for this sort of flying pattern?

Flying over eastern part of Scottish Borders, North Sea, possibly as far down as Northumberland.

Air to air refuelling pattern?

AWACS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-3_Sentry

AWACS patrol. Coordinating a military exercise on the ground in Northumbria, or an incident/exercise over the sea, looking for Ivan bears or just practising patrolling.
If it was really doing something sneaky it would have chosen a level to fly at where there would be no contrail.

That makes sense. It would be over Otterburn, not too far from Spadeadam and also covering North Sea so could be involved in an exercise in any of those areas.

How many engines?

AWACS = 4

Voyager (AAR) = 2

A

Hard Brexit monitoring. Boris and Gove at the helm.

It is too high to clearly tell how many engines. Definitely two contrails but could be four if able to see closer

Big Cat population aerial survey.

perchypanther – Member
Big Cat population aerial survey.

Are you hiding under tinfoil then Perchy?

Yup, AWACS, get them round my way sometimes displaying similar behaviour.

Is it near jivehoneyjives house?

Flying in circles usually means a recce platform like E3 or one of the others.

Are you hiding under tinfoil then Perchy?

Never take the hat off. Never

Radar calibration is another possibility.

.

There was an AWACS down that way,
https://global.adsbexchange.com/VirtualRadar/mobile.html#

AWACS….Aircraft With A Camera System. 😉

Training?

Broken sat nav?

It’ll just be biding it’s time before the slaughter

Used to watch those things circling overhead and pooping off with the 105 gun.

pooping off with the 105 gun.

Should that be in the weird dreams thread?