Big increase in military flights

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

Ooft.

Was anyone watching this one?…..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-53051055

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-53051055

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.

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!

Hell of a lot of military fighters flying today and counted 3 sentrys also so far.

A chopper flew past work today, thought it was a Chinook at first because of the noise, but it was a single-rotor. Then I realised it was a Bell UH-1 Huey, not something you see every day! According to the flight tracker, it carries the registration and call-sign ZT067, (I forgot to take a screen shot, so I think that’s it’s number), anyway, it had taken off by the A303 somewhere down near Mere, headed up past Calne, then was flying around a lot very close to Brize Norton.
I know of only one Huey flying in the U.K. that carries a military number, and that one came back from the Falklands after the Argentinian Army abandoned it. Quite made my day seeing it. 😁
Just did some checking, a captured Huey is flying as a civilian aircraft G-HUEY, but the one I saw today had a military number, so I’m not entirely sure the provenance of it now.

Seems like half the Belgian F16 fleet are playing today. Couple of Voyagers joining a UK and Lux E3 Sentry too. Good job I’ve got an all staff teleconference this morning…

Couple of Chinooks and other military helicopters over Skipton yesterday.

A chopper flew past work today, thought it was a Chinook at first because of the noise, but it was a single-rotor. Then I realised it was a Bell UH-1 Huey, not something you see every day! According to the flight tracker, it carries the registration and call-sign ZT067, (I forgot to take a screen shot, so I think that’s it’s number), anyway, it had taken off by the A303 somewhere down near Mere, headed up past Calne, then was flying around a lot very close to Brize Norton.
I know of only one Huey flying in the U.K. that carries a military number, and that one came back from the Falklands after the Argentinian Army abandoned it. Quite made my day seeing it. 😁
Just did some checking, a captured Huey is flying as a civilian aircraft G-HUEY, but the one I saw today had a military number, so I’m not entirely sure the provenance of it now.

More UK Huey info here: http://www.huey.co.uk/

Flights are available.

U2 at 60,000ft over Denmark now. Yes, I am working…

U2’s following the M5 now, just past Gloucester.

Had a Lightning and an Osprey fly over Banbury today.

On a smaller spy plane scale the RAF B350 are quite busy circling around the Salisbury planes area.
Although today it isnt accompanied by a osprey.

Nothing military flying anyway in the UK right now, except a Lancaster and Hurricane. Has ADS-B Exchange entered a time warp? Very cool.

https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/?icao=43c392

Lancaster over London.

Heading towards Leighton Buzzard with a Spitfire.

Watched a U2 (as in actually, not on the interwebz) come in to land at Fairford on Friday night, then saw it take off again on Saturday morning.

saw the lancaster on this evenings ride, it was preceded by a hurricane when i saw it. it’s really surprising how low it was.

Saw 4 military tankers late last week on ADS-B flying in a line up the east coast. Last night was weird (before the midnight covid rules) as about 7 flights all flew in to Manchester within 20 minutes of midnight, tracked on ADS-B and seen over my house – never seen it that busy. One after the other, with the last landing at 11.57, then no other flights. Mad dash.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) look out on ADS-B for a joint exercise over Cornwall with 3 Hawks vs a Eurofighter, attacking a frigate

Busy night tonight, lots of Euro fighters about flying.

Eurofighters and F35s streaming down to Cornwall!But it’s cloudy FFS

Have a search now on ADS-B for G-PRXI, it’s the Spitfire being used to do the flypast of NHS hospitals to say thank you. Currently heading to Yeovil.