Plane Spotters / Flight Radar Thread

[leaskovski]

Not sure if we have a thread for this already, so thought I would start one for all the plane spotters (Cosmo) out there...

First interesting spot I have had on it came tonight. There was a real noisy drone of a plane that I occasionally hear flying overhead. This time I managed to catch it on flight radar, F-EGVN1.

Turns out this is a military flight of an Airbus A400M, for which there are only 14 in existence (RAF have 22 on order). The flight started from RAF Lossiemouth and seemed to land near Orleans in France. For some reason the flight data isn't available on FlightRadar24 anymore, so can't find out exactly where it landed.

I wonder what we were transporting to the French then?

Any other nerds out there that take interest in this stuff?

 

[leaskovski]

It's a French registered aircraft, and the EGVN part of it is the ICAO Aerodrome designator for Brize Norton, which is why you'll hear it a lot. Chances are it's quite a common jaunt for that aircraft, so possibly personnel or parts.

Need more info... break it down for the dumb ass... i.e. I don't understand!

Edit: Ok, now I understand. That plane and its sister will be operating out of Brize Norton. It just so happened to be flying from Scotland to France when I heard it. When I normally hear them, it is probably because Brize Norton isn't that far from me.
http://www.janes.com/article/53195/raf-stands-up-first-operational-a400m-squadron

 

[leaskovski]

Haha nah not rich guys, they operate fairly often they're owned by a company called Cobham Aviation which work closely with the Military.

You can read more about it here:

http://www.military-airshows.co.uk/airports/durham-airport.htm

Nice company...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobham_plc
I particularly like the blind call thing! (http://www.mainnews.co.uk/leaked-uk-made-military-spy-gear-on-offer-to-us-police)