I thought I’d share my personal best in distance today. I tracked this plane from its origin at KSPG to within 300 feet of touch down at KHCS
I first noticed it outside the 250NM ring. It was at 11000 ft, in and of itself amazing at that distance. I tracked the flight to 300 ft obviously just moments from touchdown.
As the DUMP1090-MUTABILITY web page shows, the last location information shows 295.4 NM which was updated 9.5 minutes before I lost the fight at 14:38 EDT.
Some extremely strange atmospheric conditions must have existed to track a flight at that low of an altitude 295 NM from my 29 ft above-ground-level antenna (which is 62 feet above sea level.)
Impressive track! My VRS range plot shows a long wide extended spike all the way out over lake erie some 300NM away, but I’ve never actually been watching it track anything out that far.
In another thread on here it was suggested this was the result of “tropospheric ducting”
You can read more about it at the link below, and while I understand that it’s atmospheric conditions propogating the signal farther than it would normally go - I don’t fully understand the phenomena enough to explain what’s happening.
Aircraft scatter is another possibility. This is were signals are bounced or skimmed off higher(or lower aircraft).
A bit like pong, on its side and at a very slight angle.
Not an Aerial record, but my best A/C on Ground record, looks like Bend Oregon Airport, from Paine Field
Everett, Washington.
N135TZ ⇒ United States A08F85 [FR24] [FlightStats] [FlightAware]
Country of registration: United States
Altitude: on ground Squawk: n/a
Speed: 0 kt | 0 km/h RSSI: -23.7 dBFS
Track: n/a Last seen: 56.1s
Position: 44.068°, -121.268° (56.1s)
Distance from Site: 235 NM
I remember one time flying in to Austin from New York or some place like that on a nice, clear night. Austin and San Antonio were visible ahead, Houston was visible on the left and DFW was visible on the right. I suppose we were flying at 40,000 feet or so (it was Southwest Airlines). That was pretty impressive to me, although I suppose it’s pretty common. It was clear enough, though, that the pilot thought it significant enough to mention. We passengers, of course, couldn’t see Austin, but Houston and DFW were visible and very clear.
I guess visible light is refracted more than radio. I was reading some websites on this, but I didn’t want to delve through the math shown.
Usually for me flights around Houston disappear below 6000ft or so.
