The Central U.P. of Michigan is right under some great circle routes between DTW and ORD and the Pacific Rim, and MSP and Europe. On Tues about 5pm EST, I saw a large contrail orignally headed NW carve a large turn, came around a full 360, then another 90 and deaded off SW before what appeared to another turn off to the original NW heading. This site showed a NW747 ,NW71, on it’s way to (China?) but no mention of a diversion.
Anybody know what flight it may have been or the nature of the diversion?
It may have been a military aircraft. Are there any aerial refueling routes in the area?
When aircraft leave US airspace going over the Atlantic, they check their selcal radio. I hear this on LIVEATC.NET quite often. If they have to do the same leaving US airpspace going over Canada, perhaps they were having trouble with that and had to sort it out before crossing into Canadian airspace.
Just a possibility.
They wouldn’t need selcal in that area, it’s all VHF along the border. I vote for the tanker.
Sorry for my ignorance, but if it was indeed NWA71 (that actually goes to Nagoya and Manilla), would they not need SELCAL somewhere along the route?
You are probably right about the tanker, but if they were refueling at that point, wouldn’t there have been multiple contrails? Not only from the tanker, but the receivers? Seems to me there would have been at least one directly in line and several nearby, off to the sides. Unless it was a training flight…Who knows
Yes, eventually they would need selcal in conjunction with HF radio operations. The selcal check would not happen until they go offshore (or way north in the arctic) and use the HF for the fist time. And, these days they may have satcom with datalink so the HF becomes the secondary communications method out over the water.
The tanker, if that is what it was, might have been circling around killing time waiting for the receiving aircraft to show up, or it could have been some sort of training or maintenance flight.
John
[quote=“mikepilot”]
You are probably right about the tanker, but if they were refueling at that point, wouldn’t there have been multiple contrails? Not only from the tanker, but the receivers? /quote]
Contrails are a product of the temp. of the exhaust, particulate matter in the exhaust (to act as a catalyst for the water vapor to form on), and the moisture in the air. PERHAPS different types of engines emit differing amounts a particulate and heat. I don’t know, just a hutch.
They could have been spreading chem-trails???!!! How have you been feeling since seeing this??[/quote]
Quote “Contrails are a product of the temp. of the exhaust, particulate matter in the exhaust (to act as a catalyst for the water vapor to form on), and the moisture in the air. PERHAPS different types of engines emit differing amounts a particulate and heat. I don’t know, just a hutch”
You might be right about that, I am certainly no scientist. But, wouldn’t common sense dictate that if 2 jets were in close proximity, both would leave at least SOME contrail? Maybe we need a scientist/meteorologist to clarify this…