Flightradar24 Interesting Finds

[dmccarty]

Like I mentioned previously, I use Flight Aware to see what is flying around the house. Usually, the aircraft that gets my attention are jets flying into RDU, low flying general aviation, and helicopters. The helicopters are usually medical and running from hospital to hospital. For month early in the lock down, those flights were not happening. We do get military helicopters from time to time. Usually, National Guard from RDU, but sometimes one will be on a bearing to/from Ft. Bragg/Pope, and even more rarely, USMC helicopters on a bearing to/from Camp Lejeune. For US Army helicopters, only a few of the Ft Bragg/Pope flights will show up on Flight Aware, I have never seen a US Army RDU flight or USMC flight on Flight Aware.

I will also hear large jets from time to time, but won't be able to see them since they are flying low, and they won't be on Flight Aware.

Just this week, two Ospery's flew over. They make a very distinct sound and they were on a bearing to Camp Lejeune. A few years ago, I heard a VERY loud aircraft flying low, fast and heading towards us. In the few seconds it took me to get to the front porch, a flight of 3-4 Ospery's flew LOW, right over the house. Tree top level low. They were in train, one plane after the other, and I only saw the last two. For a few seconds. The sound was amazing. They had to be USMC or Air Force Special Operations Ospreys and I assume they were doing training at Ft. Bragg. I have seen an C130 refueling a couple of the huge CH53 Super Stallions.

One night I heard an aircraft fly over and I check Flight Aware. The plane was nothing out of the ordinary but I saw some that was odd. Most of the commercial jets i see in my area are the smaller and medium size aircraft. Seeing a heavy on Flight Aware in my area does not happen very often. But this night I saw a heavy and it got even more interesting. Flight Aware showed the plane took of from Honduras but did not have any other information about the flight. The aircraft id did not make sense either....

With the information on the Information Super Highway, it did not take long, in spite of the lack of information on Flight Aware, to figure out that the aircraft was in fact Air Force 2 flying in one of the modified 747s. The VP had been down in Honduras, and I had looked at Flight Aware just at the right time to see Air Force 2 fly over our area.

It is amazing how much information is on websites like Flight Aware.

Later,
Dan

 

[MossRoad]

The other day I was looking around and saw several delta-shaped symbols, so clicked on them and they are military trainers flying around Whichata Fall, TX and they were military trainers, usually in pairs. Pretty cool!

So then I saw one somewhere else, and it was a U2 owned by NASA. It took off from Salina, KS, flew east, did some laps over South Carolina, then came back to Salina. Neat, so I took some screen shots.

 

[MossRoad]

So I think he's gonna land in Salina.

 

[MossRoad]

Then he makes a figure 8.

 

[MossRoad]

Then he starts making a bunch of circles and I had to go pull my Suburban over to my mechanic's house because it wouldn't start (mouse chewed the wire to the crankshaft position sensor GRRR!).

 

[MossRoad]

So I come back about half an hour later and my session had timed out. So I refreshed it, and after those circles, they had flow west towards Wilson, KS, turned and came back, which, of course, drew an obscene picture in the sky, which I won't post. You see this kind of thing from time to time posted in the news, but I never thought I'd see it happen live. Your tax dollars at work.

 

[bcp]

This was a puzzler, but I finally figured it out.

Hint: There is an aircraft manufacturer in Scapoose, Oregon.

When FR24 doesn't know what aircraft something is, they use a jetliner icon. Several days ago there were a pair of icons flying in formation. One was a helicopter icon and the other was a jetliner icon. Their registration numbers were only a few last-digits apart. The helicopter icon led to a military helicopter, The jetliner icon was unknown type.

Bruce

 

[dmccarty]

A few years ago I was driving home from work and I could see a contrail that was heading north. What was odd was that the plane made a HUGE 180 degree turn and headed south parallel to it's north bound track. Never seen a plane do that before. The turn had to have been many miles across and it was very precise. I have always wondered what plane made that turn and why.

Later,
Dan

 

[RobertN]

The other day I was looking around and saw several delta-shaped symbols, so clicked on them and they are military trainers flying around Whichata Fall, TX and they were military trainers, usually in pairs. Pretty cool!

So then I saw one somewhere else, and it was a U2 owned by NASA. It took off from Salina, KS, flew east, did some laps over South Carolina, then came back to Salina. Neat, so I took some screen shots.

Here in N. California, we see a lot of that coming out of Travis AFB and Beale AFB Will funny names given to C-5's and C-17's out of Travis.

We also see a lot of flights out of NAS Top Gun Fallon, coming across the Sierra's to the old Mather AFB(still used by National Guard and some military flights). Sometimes they're the delta shape, sometimes they're just code names. Right now, ROPER12 and ROPER13 are flying around Beale AFB; WORK17 is a C-17 flying out of Travis AFB.

If you watch around Edwards AFB in SoCal, there's frequently test flights, with military code names.

 

[JethroB]

I can see C130‘s, Fort Rucker helicopters and the like. I am in an A-10 Warthog training area. They don’t show up on any radar services I’ve looked at. An A-10 buzzed the house today at maybe 1,000 feet or less, no sign of it on Flightradar24 or FlightAware.