Dot watching aeroplanes😁

[steveindenmark]

I am often watching the dots of ultra cycle races on my phone. But last night I got into a different type of dot watching. I heard a large propeller driven aeroplane flying over the house. I flicked onto an ap called Flightradar24 and saw it was an airbus A400M belonging to the RAF. It was flying from Brize Norton but had no destination listed. I was curious and continued to log in and follow it. As it was heading for Russian airspace I wondered what would happen. 😊 But the aeroplane set down in Talin, Estonia. I dont know where it went onto. Its an interesting app and it is supring what you learn.

 

[steveindenmark]

 

[fossyant]

We had a C17 at the start of lockdown doing loads of soft landings at Manchester airport and just circling the area at low height due to a lack of commercial air traffic for at least an afternoon. Since then I've seen Apache's and Chinooks in the area !

 

[Cycleops]

There's a Airbus military transport that regularly flies over our house doing practice landings at the nearby airport.
Airbus paid a bribe to the brother of the last PM to buy it and were recently fined $3.9 billion, yes that is correct.

 

[figbat]

I grew up in the shadow of Brize Norton and currently live not too far away, with RAF Benson close too so see a lot of this stuff. Just the other day I was on a road ride not far from home and a Chinook flew over very low - not an unusual occurrence but I stopped and watched this one as it put down in a nearby field then took off again a couple of minutes later.

 

[ianrauk]

I live in the shadow of Biggin Hill. Lots of large unamed flights every now and then.

 

[screenman]

I live in the middle of about 5 RAF bases the furthest about 12 miles away, we get afew planes for sure, I use the App often the other one I find interesting is the shipping app that is much the same.

 

[Lilliburlero]

I live in the middle of about 5 RAF bases the furthest about 12 miles away, we get afew planes for sure, I use the App often the other one I find interesting is the shipping app that is much the same.

Love the shipping app, I use it to follow my lad who is out on deployment. My Mrs calls me a stalker

EDIT- Just watched his ship leave port and they have now turned the AIS off.

 

[Joffey]

I live right next to a RAF camp - we had some Apache Helicopters there a few weeks ago. One of the exercises was some special forces guys dangling off ropes attached to the bottom of the helicopters as they flew around

 

[I like Skol]

I live right next to a RAF camp - we had some Apache Helicopters there a few weeks ago. One of the exercises was some special forces guys dangling off ropes attached to the bottom of the helicopters as they flew around

We were never there, you saw nothing. OK?

 

[Edwardoka]

Random factoid: if you have Flight Simulator 2020 not only are those dots turned into in-game traffic (with a couple of minutes delay), you can jump into the cockpit of them and fly their flight plan (although it's highly likely that the game will get the aircraft model wrong, since there's only 20 models in the base game.)

 

[Deleted member 26715]

When the son flew out to NZ a few years ago we tracked his progress all the way there

 

[I like Skol]

I thought my wife was having an affair as she packed a small case and went away for a few days.
I tracked her movements and it turned out she flew to Germany for work 🤔

 

[DaveReading]

I flicked onto an ap called Flightradar24 and saw it was an airbus A400M belonging to the RAF. It was flying from Brize Norton but had no destination listed.

The flight-tracker apps can only show the destination if it's a scheduled airline flight. For example "BAW2733" has just taken off from Heathrow, and the trackers know it's the regular flight to Lanzarote.

So military flights will rarely show a destination on the flight-trackers.

 

[steveindenmark]

Many aeroplanes dont show up on the tracker. Do you know why that is?