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Plane Spotters / Flight Radar Thread

FBi7 said:
Cool, now we've established this, is this axle a steering bogey like on the T7?

S Would you happen to know what, if any, error messages would appear on the ECAM as a result of said Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly?
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1. Don’t know - I’d have to google it which you are more than welcome to do :D

2. Also not sure, it may tell them they’ve lost the tyre pressure reading but I can’t think of anything else system-wise which would know what happened. I’d expect ATC informed them fairly quickly and with no immediate emergency it was just more convenient to deal with it back at Heathrow.
 
Lots of stuff not on FR/ADSB just flew low and fast over where I live (near Wincanton) setting all the dogs off - the one plane I partially saw looked like a Typhoon but the engines sounded more like F-18s.
 
We regularly have Typhoons over our place on training exercises. Yesterday was the first time this year, zooming all over. Because we have a large garden, with a brick built circle, like a small round about, we’re convinced they use as a way point as they always go over it and turn. We sometimes go wave at them and get a wing wave which is super cool. They sometimes fly very low, they even did an exercise last year (We looked it up) which was sub 250 feet.
 
At one point yesterday there must have been around 8 US tankers flying circuits for fuelling, sort of hints at how much fire power is being derployed right now, just crazy.
 
Remember being in Swindon in 2001 and watching C17 (I think) after C17 going overhead and thinking surely they are going to run out of them soon
 
aVdub said:
The press report as ground to air, but...
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I've not looked to see if there are updated reports but:

Most of the ground based air defence systems in use there use missiles with some variant of active radar homing with warheads which have a high crew kill efficiency so tends to point to an air to air kill and they were lucky it was if so. I believe Kuwait most commonly uses the AIM-9X-2 on the F-18 which means the engagement could have been at 10+ miles which is beyond easy visible range - beyond 4-6 miles a fighter jet is difficult to spot visually. The missiles use an infrared seeker so would have gone for the engine, which is basically what is seen in the video.

Interestingly what some sources are saying is that there was an IFF failure and the US refused to confirm if they were their planes so after repeated warning attempts they were shot down.
 
Rroff said:
I've not looked to see if there are updated reports but:

Most of the ground based air defence systems in use there use missiles with some variant of active radar homing with warheads which have a high crew kill efficiency so tends to point to an air to air kill and they were lucky it was if so. I believe Kuwait most commonly uses the AIM-9X-2 on the F-18 which means the engagement could have been at 10+ miles which is beyond easy visible range - beyond 4-6 miles a fighter jet is difficult to spot visually. The missiles use an infrared seeker so would have gone for the engine, which is basically what is seen in the video.

Interestingly what some sources are saying is that there was an IFF failure and the US refused to confirm if they were their planes so after repeated warning attempts they were shot down.
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That was my thoughts when I see what appeared to be a vertical stabilizer falling from the jet and where the point of impact appears to be.
 
Penfold101 said:
The Americans have about 250 of them.

We have 8!
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Best time of my 17 years so far working on 99 in the 2010s. C-17s are absolute beasts and we don't use them to their full potential. But costs would be extortionate if we did.

I'm just glad I'm not on 617 anymore, poor guys are getting fragged :o
 
mattyg said:
Defo looked like more than 8, Felt like it was a constant supply. Would it be RAF and USAF C17's and possibly the Atlas too.
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If it was 2001 then definitely not ours - we only got the first one that year and Atlas didn’t come into service till 2015

Mad_Jay said:
Best time of my 17 years so far working on 99 in the 2010s. C-17s are absolute beasts and we don't use them to their full potential. But costs would be extortionate if we did.

I'm just glad I'm not on 617 anymore, poor guys are getting fragged :o
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There were talks of binning them off and contracting out the heavy lift stuff because it’s dropped off so much since Afghan ended and there’s nothing to replace the C-17 even on the drawing board.

That might be being reconsidered now I suspect…
 
Penfold101 said:
There were talks of binning them off and contracting out the heavy lift stuff because it’s dropped off so much since Afghan ended and there’s nothing to replace the C-17 even on the drawing board.

That might be being reconsidered now I suspect…
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The heavy rects and depth maint was contracted out to Boeing by the time I left in late 2015.

I mentioned in another thread how we are the fleet leaders in the world for flying hours for the type, we were back then and highly likely we still are now. I'm not sure how long they have left now or what the replacement plan is, if there even is one.

I don't think there's even anything in the pipeline from the big manufacturers to replace them either. The Long Beach production line ended over a decade ago.

We will probably just contract it out like you said, I know other countries do for strategic air lift with the Atlas Air 747s and Ukrainian Antonovs. But what's the reaction/ready time with those and their appetite to go into contested/dangerous areas in the future, especially with cheap drones flying around.

Sure the A400 is maturing, but it can still only carry half the pallets of a C-17 and is slower.
 
Mad_Jay said:
Sure the A400 is maturing, but it can still only carry half the pallets of a C-17 and is slower.
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Nice platform but you can't AFAIK shift a main battle tank with one or other heavy armour or SPGs though we seem to be phasing most of that stuff out if not already gone :(
 
We had the B1's fly over Swindon yesterday as they left Fairford for an overnight mission in Iran... Such a nice sound and rumble as they flew over
 
Whats the current guidance on listening in to air traffic control? A long, long time ago I used to enjoy sitting with a scanner and listening. It seems a lot muddier than it used to be and I saw the Baofeng UV21s for sale and have convinced myself they can be used for it but technically can't advertise the fact, am I way off base?
 
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