Flightradar24 Interesting Finds

[dmccarty]

Heard a helicopter last night and used the ADS-B Exchange - track aircraft live link to see what was happening. Thought it was a medical flight but the link was not clear and I should have looked at the other website I have been using... I got side tracked because I could see two C130s, at least they were shown as C130s, flying east of Pope AAF and then doing approaches to Pope. They were flying very close together and with very little altitude separation.

But wait! There is MORE! There were two C17's flying around Pope as well. They were not flying as close to each other as the C130s but they were still close. I never saw either flight go above 5,000 feet. They stayed around 3,000-4,000 feet. The C1s approached Pope, disappeared, reappeared and circled off to I assume make another approach.

 

[orezok]

Homeland Security

 

[ning]

U2 swinging through as we passed by Beale earlier, luckily I wasn't driving so I could take a crappy video

I think it was about to land after this, it turned to the south to approach but we went behind hills.

 

[MossRoad]

Now they have photos of you.


(they have photos of all of us! )

 

[bcp]

DARPA plane far off direct route



Bruce

 

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i have no idea what this is doing

 

[bcp]

It's NASA.

Gulfstream C-20A (GIII) - AFRC | ESPO

espo.nasa.gov

Bruce

 

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It's NASA.

Gulfstream C-20A (GIII) - AFRC | ESPO

espo.nasa.gov

Bruce

I mean, that was pretty obvious from the screen grab. I'm just curious what they're doing in particular besides the obvious "NASA Science Stuff"

 

[bcp]

Looks like:

Calendar | NASA Airborne Science Program

airbornescience.nasa.gov

What is UAVSAR? - UAVSAR

Using an airborne radar to study earth science (earthquakes, volcanoes, vegetation, hydrology, ice, etc.), with emergency response potential

uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov

Bruce

 

[bcp]

One of the Air Tractor floatplanes fighting the Tunnel 5 fire identifies as a business jet.

White Salmon Happenings | Captured some images of the tunnel 5 fire yesterday...

Captured some images of the tunnel 5 fire yesterday...

www.facebook.com

Bruce

 

[JethroB]

This guy doesn’t show up on radar sites but he sure is fun to watch. Pretty rare to see crop dusters (aerial applicators ) now, it used to be all day every day a few decades ago.

1972 Cessna Pawnee spraying fungicide on corn.

 

[3Ts]

It's interesting to watch how they deal with a house in the corn field. The aerobatics they are capable of is impressive. Wish I'd had a camera at the time. And then there are also the power lines they have to watch out for.

 

[MossRoad]

Apparently some goober on a flight from Texas to Amsterdam got irate because he didn't get his 1st choice of meal, so they dumped fuel over Lake Michigan, landed in Chicago, and kicked him off the plane.

United Flight To Europe Diverts After Irate Passenger Doesn't Get First Choice Of Meal - View from the Wing

United Airlines flight 20 from Houston to Amsterdam dumped fuel, and then diverted to Chicago, after the business class passenger in seat 11G melted down over not having his first choice of meal available. After removing the passenger and refueling at O'Hare, the flight just landed, about three...

viewfromthewing.com

 

[orezok]

 

[kenmbz]

View attachment 810862

Wow a UAV and it shows up!

 

[MossRoad]

That made me dizzy.

 

[dmccarty]

View attachment 810647

Apparently some goober on a flight from Texas to Amsterdam got irate because he didn't get his 1st choice of meal, so they dumped fuel over Lake Michigan, landed in Chicago, and kicked him off the plane.

United Flight To Europe Diverts After Irate Passenger Doesn't Get First Choice Of Meal - View from the Wing

United Airlines flight 20 from Houston to Amsterdam dumped fuel, and then diverted to Chicago, after the business class passenger in seat 11G melted down over not having his first choice of meal available. After removing the passenger and refueling at O'Hare, the flight just landed, about three...

viewfromthewing.com

How awful for the other people on that plane. People who force a landing of plane should get some serious jail time AND be fined financially to compensate the airline and passengers. These events are just too common and need to be punished. There was one Plane Rage incident recently, I think they landed at RDU, and the woman who caused the plane to divert was not arrested...

The airlines are doing soooo many things to make flying stressful, dealing with security and every other hurdle one has to do to fly just adds to the stress, but there is no excuse for these disruptions and these people need to face real punishment.

It is not a US only problem either and happens in Europe as well. To be fair, it seems like many of the European disruptions are by more than one person which is far worse.

 

[dmccarty]

Watching the Flight sites is addictive....

Last night was danged interesting and I saw soooo many things I had never seen before.

I saw at least three C130's flying around. One started in SC and flew into NC. Another flew from east to west in NC and flew some circles. The third plane was well off the coast of NC and was flying patterns offshore. That plane would disappear from time to time.

There were two pairs of B767 which I think were KC676s flying in eastern NC. They flew down from the north east somewhere. Kinda odd to see what appears to be two airliners flying on top of each other. I had not seen this before, even one pair would have been unusual but to see two pairs was really interesting. The pairs were not flying anywhere close to each other either, just in the eastern part of the state.

An Apache took off from the National Guard base at RDU and flew south, south west and seemed to be doing attacks on a forest in western NC. That was not unusual. Sometimes they will fly over us but not last night.

There were a bunch of Black Hawk and similar copters flying all over the danged place. Off NC and VA and over various places in NC and SC.

There was a drone doing circles over Fort Bragg which I have never seen before.

An Osprey was flying loops around eastern and central NC before I lost track of it over Myrtle Beach SC. What was interesting is the graphic for the Osprey changes depending on what the aircraft was doing. The Osprey landed at Wilmington, and on approach, the Osprey symbol went from flying like a plane to showing the props rotated like a copter. The same thing happened when the Osprey got over Myrtle Beach. Never seen that before.

On other days, I have seen training aircraft flying in the ranges off NC. I assume there might have been some fighters flying against the training aircraft but they did not show up. The planes looked to be dog fighting and there was a business class jet flying out there with them obviously collecting data.

So much to see on these sites and it is amazing what can be seen....

 

[MossRoad]

Watching the Flight sites is addictive....

...
So much to see on these sites and it is amazing what can be seen....

Absolutely!

 

[dmccarty]

Saw this 747 jet fly into Cherry Point, NC which is the USMC 2nd air wing's air station. You can see a C130 flying to the NE of Havelock, aka Cherry Point. The C130's I see often have the call sign of Otis.

Back to the 747. The 747 flew from Estonia and the US president and other European leaders were in that part of the world having meetings. Soooooo, I assume that the 747 took something back from Estonia but what?

The presidential vehicles and copters would not be in NC so maybe they took some Marines for protection or some other equipment.

What was interesting, and scary, was that after the 747 landed, I watched it taxi and then park on a ramp... What I really needed was a live aerial view so I could see what was off loaded, people or equipment.