Can anyone explain this?

I’m looking at KORD airport activity at exactly 12:50 CDT and I’m wondering what this circle of aircraft is? I don’t know how to put the activity link on here, so I’m sorry. But I’m looking at KORD and I see a circle of “aircraft” labeled as TST1,2 3, and so on.

TEST of the local area radar or nav systems???

in future, just copy the address of the page you are viewing and paste in the ’ posting’ screen.

example below:

flightaware.com/live/flight/MXA8 … /MMZC/KORD

links directly to the page you reference.

NAV Canada flies many of these test flight to check local and regional ATC systems. Example below.

flightaware.com/live/flight/NVC1 … /CYWG/CYWG

Most likely some TEST data was being run through the system- we’ve seen it in the past.

Alternately, the UFOs from Terra Sigma Tau returned and got another ATC hold (flying saucers are good at holding) waiting for an arrival slot. Their first ship had to be diverted when a gate wasn’t made available (see USA Today Story).

Could also be a bored controller or trainee just tagging up aircraft for training or practice or whatever.

Sounds like an ATC system test. Got a screenshot?

ptthomas745 is most likey correct. I used to do it all the time.
If we had visitors in the facility I would demostrate the ARTS tracking and internal handoff capabilites by starting dummy tracks using the same names i.e.tst1, tst2 etc. :smiling_imp: