Interesting flight tracks - stacking?

Morning all,

Just seen this in my map log…

I take it it’s stacking over an airfield / airport in that area?

Not seen that before - cool!

Saying that, Im not sure what airport that would be there…

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1EYagB_Y0S615ZosEJ_DbMiqSKgvr79AixS2RkO0TMvY/pub?w=960&h=720

Not stacking, not at 20k ft… It’s a RAF Hercules.

Interesting - RAF Waddington’s SW of that (can be seen on that map).

Yep, def a Herc - planespotters.net/Aviation_ … ?reg=ZH884 .

Wonder what’s she’s up to, flying in circles at 20k?

Here in the US we see flight patterns like that fairly frequently, though much lower in smaller aircraft.

http://blog.enigma.io/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Screenshot-2015-06-02-16.38.36.png

Been tracked back to FBI surveillance flights.
blog.enigma.io/track-84-aircraft … veillance/

There’s some discussion of it on this board toward the end of the thread, comparing it with the repetative linear pattern of mapping/GIS flights:

ads-b-flight-tracking-f21/now-this-is-an-interesting-flight-pattern-t36835.html

Her Majesty’s lads may be doing something similar - though in what seems to be a fairly rural location, they may be the very least testing something similar. Honestly though, given the proximity to RAF Waddington it may be perhaps simply testing a reconnaissance system over friendly soil.

According to wikipedia “The base is the RAF’s Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) hub” and they operate AEW aircraft and an array of drones - the plane may also be flying sensors in support of some other kind of testing.

@JonHanford - interesting stuff! :slight_smile:

Seen today over Vienna/Austria… I am not sure, if it’s for aerial photography or as a TV relay (Aero Sotravia) because of the Vienna Marathon today…

dropbox.com/s/x1on75bmlswwd … 1.png?dl=0

Your thought about TV relay might be spot on. Look what I found

flickr.com/photos/glamichael/14701196692

Interesting!

Thought this track (racetrack) might be of some interest. The flight is out of MCAS Cherry Point, NC.
Still experimenting with my antenna, waiting for my roof stuff to get here.

Russian An 124 circles prior to landing at Kinston NC. The An arrived at Kinson at the same time as a major line of thunderstorms.

The An 124 lands at the 11,500 foot runway at the ill fated NC Global Transport Park. One of the several industries at the park is Spirit Aero Systems. Spirit manufactures the composite center fuselage upper and lower shells (section 15) and front wing spar for the Airbus A350 XWB aircraft using state-of-the-art technology and processes.

The A350 XWB’s composite fuselage structure, known as Section 15, is approximately 65 feet long, 20 feet wide and weigh nearly 9,000 pounds. The spar is a wing structure made of nearly 100 percent composite material, weighs more than 2,000 pounds, and measures approximately 105 feet long.

The AN 124s fly in and out periodically, transporting components for further assembly in Europe!

Could it be paratrooper training? We saw a similar pattern in a smaller plane near here a couple of weekends ago. A while later we saw a parachute-they were doing skydives.

It’s not a Hercules, cy80rg, it’s a Boeing E3-D AWACS from RAF Waddington. I tracked one four days ago doing circles over York for over six hours, then doing the same thing the next two days over the North Sea. If I knew how to post pictures here I’d be able to show you the plots I saved, as well as some photos I took four years ago of an E3 doing the same thing directly overhead.

The E3 always gives a very jagged or broken track, presumably due to the heavy interference on its ADS-B signal caused by its massive radar. A couple of days ago I watched an E3 and an RAF A330 tanker flying circuits over the North Sea, about 40 miles apart - the E3 giving its usual sawtooth track and the A330 a perfectly smooth one, but I can guarantee the E3 will have been flying true circles!

The jagged tracks are because the positions are from mlat, not ADS-B.

(the mlat solver is currently tuned for a constant-velocity model which does not handle turns particularly well)

The E3s also give a broken track when flying straight lines to and from their patrol areas, with tracking lost for many seconds at a time - this can’t be due to the MLAT solver setup as well, then? I’ve not seen this happen with other planes except at extreme ranges, but the E3s are flying at 20,000 - 30,000ft and not very far away. The MLAT solver doesn’t appear to do a bad job tracking light aircraft doing tight turns, but the E3s are doing constant turns with a radius of about 15 - 20NM and the errors are huge, even though the rate of change of direction must be far slower. It would be interesting to know more about it - I don’t think it can be all down to MLAT.

Another interesting flight over Vienna/Austria at 01:00 AM local time… and it’s still flying. :slight_smile:

https://s11.postimg.org/x2j13ausj/2016_10_01_7.pngfoto hochladen

flightcalibration.de/en/

flightaware.com/live/flight/FCK … 0930/2116Z