I live in a a rural area of Florida and quite often we have 2-3 S-3’s Vikings doing a very low high speed pass through our area. After talking with the local controllers at a nearby airport they inform me we have a some sort of low level training pattern for the military. Is there anywhere I can find out the patterns? It almost appears to be a game of follow the leader or tag the way they are chasing each other. Also I have never seen any other aircraft except S-3’s Vikings, why would not other aircraft use these patterns?
I love it when these aircraft do there fly-by’s, but my wife is not keen on it since she has horses and they seem to loose there mind when it happens.
You probably only see them because the route is restricted to them,some military routes are restricted to certain aircraft or certain squadrons have priorty,and there are tons of S-3 at Navy bases in florida,there are 5 Squadrons at NAS jacksonville alone.
The rest of the time, unless flying an intercept, they’re just another aircraft in transit and fly according to whatever rules they’ve filed under, e.g. IFR or VFR.
Not true. When flying low level, the rules are quite clear and quite strict on staying in the depiced route. This is for our saftey as well as to avoid collisions. We fly low level at night all the time in the B-1 (not the case with all airframes), and at the speeds we fly, venturing out of the known corridor can get you killed. I was an instructor in the T-37 for three years as well, and I can assure you that in all the phases of pilot training we emphasize the need to stay in the published low level routes. The first order of business if you are off the route or unsure of where you are is to climb and contact the appropriate ATC. I would strongly advise any GA flyers out there to pay close attention to these routes on the sectionals. Some of these routes are not used often, but many are very busy, particularly those in the vicinity of a training base. Jets will be traveling along them from 200 to 600 knots. Clearing for traffic is part of our scan, but at those speeds and that close the ground we have alot on our mind. Often these routes terminate in restricted airspace where we will be delivering weapons. But I can assure you that we (military pilots) do not free form low altitude flight in the US. It is very much against the rules.
