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That website is great. We get a lot of aircraft flying over and being able to see what they are is great. Ambicopter was out a lot last week practicing night landings at the nearby airfield. Interesting to see that the Red Arrows don't show up on it though
Heard an unusual aircraft a few minutes ago, looked out of the front window to see a pair of V-22 Ospreys flying over! Opened the web page to check on them, only one is showing, but the other is Knife71! It’s track started at Mildenhall, and it landed at the Royal Marine base at Poole.
@Kuco the area north of the wash is a Managed Danger area. The 323 complex. It’s not unusual to see dozens of fighters on an exercise in that area. The area itself is vast so civil ATC to/from Europe have to take a detour round it...even if the military are not playing in it. Generally there’s no sub hunting in that area...that’s what the West coast of Scotland is used for. A lot of the activity involves Falcon20’s pretending to be targets (usually Cobham/Rushden) which has a load of electronic jamming kit on board.
The MDA has now been moved over the UK east coast to cater for the new F35’s...(most of which don’t paint on that tracker)as they’re a ground attack aircraft as well.
If you follow @RAFBrizeNorton on Twitter, they post about the C17 flights. It's been in and around the SW a lot for the last few days.
Knife71 went over with its anonymous companion about 35 minutes ago, heading north. I tracked it up over Cirencester towards Birmingham then it turned NE across Cambridgeshire towards Conningsby then suddenly vanished.
It is odd some aircraft will vanish then can appear again.
I'm aware the Wash is used as a bombing range, as we use to joke at work about spraying one of our weed boats orange as it was forever breaking down and sailing it to the Wash.
I’m aware the Wash is used as a bombing range, as we use to joke at work about spraying one of our weed boats orange as it was forever breaking down and sailing it to the Wash.
Many years ago on a family holiday in Scotland, my grandfather was really keen to go to Cape Wrath.
We went to the ferry quay and the boatman said it was cancelled that day as the RAF were using it as a bombing range (that whole area has a lot of military use).
He then added that when the RAF were flying, the safest place to be was the bombing range!
I'd love to see an Osprey in person. Not seen one yet.
Well there we go, two Apache gunships just flew straight over my house !
Count zero, when aircraft fly in formation they have to abide by certain rules. Being within a certain distance of each other and within sight of the flight leader are examples. If that's the case then only the flight leader has their transponder on, hence why you only see 1 Knife call sign. They are then treated as one aircraft by ATC.
If for any reason the rules for flying in formation cannot be met, it will break up and all aircraft will then switch their transponder on and be assigned an individual transponder code. They will then be treated as individual aircraft.
Formation flights are allowed in controlled airspace but only if there are certain conditions met.
Knife71 went over with its anonymous companion about 35 minutes ago, heading north. I tracked it up over Cirencester towards Birmingham then it turned NE across Cambridgeshire towards Conningsby then suddenly vanished.
Well I was tracking it as it flew up NNW passing to the east of York so I messaged my sister who lives up right near where it was going. She didn't particularly care one way or the other but she did send me a picture of it as it went over her house. 🙂
A couple of Hercules doing air refueling.
Never heard of this plane before but one heading toward Oxford. Short SC 7 Skyvan
@cobrakai - two more V-22’s went over tonight, flying from Portland Bill, where there’s a military base, and ended up at The Wash. both had transponders showing, one was Knife74, the other was XXXX72.
There been a lot of activity locally tonight down on the Imber Ranges, four Lynx, a Chinook and a C130, as well as the Ospreys.
The two Ospreys passed close to where I live. I could see their lights flashing in the distance out the front window.
The A400M is doing touch and go at Cardiff International Airport at the moment:
https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/?icao=43c5dc
Edit: or is it RAF St Athan?
Seems to be a significant number of American Military transport/fuel aircraft flying over Northern UK (Yorkshire Lancs), at height this morning
A C130's just done a touch down at Manchester airport, then flew off over my house.
Would never usually notice, but WFH in 'the shed' and the lack of any other aircraft, just makes you notice them.
Huge solid contrail still visible in the sky over Northern Cumbria from a C5M Super Galaxy transporter - now heading over Dalbeatie....
she's a bigun' do I win a prize or owt?
Noted how the C5M disappeard off the radar as it headed off over the Atlantic...noticed it as very unusual solid contrail in the clear blue sky...anyone else see it?
There have been a lot of RAF transports flying over Sidmouth when radar shows them miles away.
Could swear one of them was an Antonov in grey/white with a blue stripe but no camera so cant confirm.
Just in case you have not seen this
Some of the callsigns are generic, love the more inspired ones though.
There's a Typhoon around at the moment (suspect has taken off from nearby) with JEDI0011 callsign. Hungarian C130 the other day with BARTOK01 as callsign. I'm sure there are others.
I was watching some curious activity just SouthWest of Frankfurt earlier, as many as 8 F16's up in the air at once. In packs of 2 circling around, some tight- some as if on standby. They were closely following an unspecified aircraft who's country of origin was 'Russia'...I'm assuming this is a dogfight exercise and they adapt the identifier for a laugh, either that or there's some real sabre rattling stuff going on...
Another C5M Super Galaxy inbound, heading over Leeds shortly - a Boeing E3 sentry up, and 2 EuroFighters making shapes off the NorthEast coast - busy day.
Not as good as the V22 Osprey I saw yesterday eve through binoculars, with someone rappelling from the cargo doors from a hover above the hills..impressive stuff
US Super Galaxy currently over North Yorkshire dales, heading over Cumbria now...34000ft but she's a big bird.
I’d love to see an Osprey in person. Not seen one yet.
Feathered or military? Lucky enough to have seen both around my home town.
Those C5’s are huge, but not compared to the Antonov AN-225, which is the heaviest aircraft ever built.
Used to see the smaller Antonov cargo planes flying over from time to time, on approach to Lyneham when they were helping with logistics to Afghanistan and the middle-east.
Really sad when Lyneham closed, all sorts of interesting stuff would fly in and out, always fun trying to work out what was going over at night, long before those tracking sites were available.
Had an RAF Jaguar try to land on Hungerdown Lane, what was then the A350, which is a few metres up the road from me! Foggy night, thought the street lights were the landing lights for Lyneham, which is about ten miles away, got to about 100 feet off the deck, realised his error, and slammed the reheats on! Made a hell of a racket, my mum woke up screaming! Apparently the pilot was given a bit of a lecture...
Stupid decision to close it and move everything to Brize, bigger base, better infrastructure and better road access, but politics wins, it was planned that Lyneham would become an engineering tri-services training base for army, navy and airforce, then that fell apart and now it’s just army.
With tracking sites available it would have been so much more interesting watching what was going on if it was still open.
Lyneham was supposed to be tri-service but from what I hear the Navy wanted it at sultan and the RAF wanted to do their own thing (as usual) so they pulled out leaving the army on their own.
Mind you, bordon (the reason I left) and Arborfield were pretty miserable. Mates say Lyneham is spot on.
Those Typhoons go quite high - saw one up through 30k, 40k, 50k - now down again.
U2 coming up over Stoke on Trent
Antonov An-225 Mriya (biggest aircraft in the world) just flew West to East from Ireland over Newcastle, currently heading out to North Sea.
F35 Lightnings also playing around in Norfolk
U2 at 60K feet heading east over Denmark atm too
U2 at 60K feet heading east over Denmark atm too
Good spot, that is the first time I've ever seen one on the site
Can't see the U2 anymore, but there is an RAF Typhoon heading east over Poland. Seems to be way out of it's usual stomping ground of the N Sea, it's also on a similar track to the U2, albeit 30000ft lower.
https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/?icao=43c73a
There are RAF Typhoons based in Lithuania at the moment
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/raf-typhoons-begin-nato-air-policing-mission-in-lithuania
Not tracking that one but was looking at flight radar this morning about 9 checking our our Monday crew change chopper flight and noticed a Norwegian crew change chopper south east of us doing a strange flight pattern (circling) for about half an hour a thought it a bit strange. For reference we are right on the division between UK/Norwegian sectors due east of Edinburgh
Lots of activity off the NE coast of Norfolk, two Boeing KC-135 tankers flying patterns outside of normal Air to Air Refuelling Areas.
There's a F-15 down. I guess they're looking for the pilot.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-53051055Yep, I wondered what the hell was going on, there was suddenly a massive search type pattern being flown by two K35 refuelling tankers and an E3 AWACS.
Hunter out and about from Scampton by the looks of it:
Yep, I wondered what the hell was going on, there was suddenly a massive search type pattern being flown by two K35 refuelling tankers and an E3 AWACS.
There’s still a USAF KC-135 Stratotanker out in the North Sea, and an RC-135 Rivet Joint surveillance and communications jet out there as well. I haven’t seen any specifics yet, so I don’t know if the pilot ejected safely. Hope so. 😕
Still no news on the pilot but they've found the crash site.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-53051055
Sadly not good news. The pilot has been found and didn’t make it.
Guardian reports that pilot has been found dead.
Sad news, that. ☹️
Q4 @55000 ft and it isnt an Audi. Flying over Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo sort of area
Quick google suggests it's a Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk
Large number of Chinook flights up and down the valley this week. Pairs every evening, then this morning 4 of them flew up in an offset line about 100 foot up. Very impressive but no camera! 2 hours later 2 of them came back down the valley, so I have no idea what they did with the other 2.
Pic from the patio!
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