Interesting Aircraft

[Squad 701]

13.45  : EIA427 N249BA approaching West Cork off the sea, heading west towards Kerry.
Boeing 747 Dreamlifter

http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?search_active=1&search=&sheadline=&domains=Airliners.net&sitesearch=Airliners.net&client=pub-8297169501225184&forid=1&channel=1924797129&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&cof=GALT%3A%23E6E8FA%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23000000%3BVLC%3AE6E8FA%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3A45678C%3BLBGC%3A45678C%3BALC%3AE6E8FA%3BLC%3AE6E8FA%3BT%3AC4C8CC%3BGFNT%3AC4C8CC%3BGIMP%3AC4C8CC%3BLH%3A36%3BLW%3A639%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcdn-www.airliners.net%2Fgraphics%2Fopen_file_header_image.jpg%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.airliners.net%3BFORID%3A1%3B&hl=en&search_field=datedesc&q=N249BA&submit=

[WAL 2T]

40081A - BAE146-300 G-LUXE  - Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements, flight id: METMAN

[ukv1290]

ZF573 - An Islander owned by the RAF anyone know what it is used for seems to be up and about alot!

Tom

[DaveReid]

ZF573 - An Islander owned by the RAF anyone know what it is used for seems to be up and about alot!

Do you have a mobile phone ?   :-)

[ACW367]

UKV

Here is the official story from the RAF website.  http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafnortholt/aboutus/aircraft_equipment.cfm

"The Islander operated by the RAF Northolt Station Flight is a military variant of the Britten-Norman BN-2T Islander aircraft. The Flight operates two CC Mk2 aircraft, registrations ZF573 and ZH537, in the photographic mapping and light communications roles. The aircraft can be configured in a passenger or freight configuration and can also be used for pilot/aircrew training. The Station Flight was formed in August 1991 and currently operates with 8 pilots, 1 navigators and 11 engineers. " " Some minor modifications have been made to the aircraft in order to accomplish their flexible role. "

They also now have ZH536, the flexible role quote and the fact they have more "engineers" than pilots is the telling one.  You are right that they are up and about at all times of day and night and will often run relays with one taking off 20 mins or so before another lands.  They can often be found operating on Heathrow approach 120.4.  The callsigns seen on the Mode-S (ie KRF03) are fixed and do not reflect the individual Rafair callsigns they use on their missions.  Their customer is not the RAF and that is about all that needs to be said on this forum.

[ukv1290]

Awsome! Thanks for that information!!

Tom

[Marpleman]

Hi Guys

N828BX DC8 ATI (AB4EC2) just passed north of Stockport, heading almost due West at 34000 ft trailing beautifully!!!

What a splendid sight  - not many knocking around these days :-(

Lot's of visable freigters up and about in the North West tonight

Cheers

Rich

[RodBearden]

Too true - earlier this evening I had the bins on An124 UR-82008 overhead and heading south, beautifully glinting in the sunshine - it was at FL300 but seemed a LOT closer.

Rod in Chorley

[Marpleman]

Also earlier on

N742MA (A9FB0C) B737-83N   MIAMI AIR ??

Appeared to be operating a "MAC" flight, calling "RCH733" @35000ft hdg 133

Getting too dark now!!

[TedLoon]

Marpleman I clocked this MIAMI AIR 73 yesterday....... puzzled me but I'm no expert

[TedLoon]

wish I had seen the dc8....... a rare sight worth seeing

[Marpleman]

Evening All

here are a couple of funnies for today - any ideas??

Firstly, this one's been popping up on the list all weekend,but put in another couple of appearences today:-

484BCF - not showing on the data base, no type, nothing, but sporadic altitudes being displayed? It's a Dutch coding, but I cannot find anything on GAS or the web.
When it appeared today, twice this morning, it corresponded with a cream/beige Cessna 400 series/Navajo or similar with tip tanks, buzzing around the EGCC (Manchester) holding zone  at around 6000 feet - this was around 11 am BST.

Secondly,and more interestingly, early evening saw 3F9330 appear on the list - again not showing on my data base, but showing on the Aerodata RadarBox Analyser as a German AF F4!!!!

Whilst I'm familiar with the AirNav by exception giving spurious reg's/pictures based on often repeated mil codes etc, I can't recall much along the lines of the Hex code being wrong?

Anyone aware of any German F4's knocking about early evening in the North West - Warton or Valley perhaps and en-routr home?

Apologies if the later should have gone in the "interesting mil" section, but didn't seem worth opening a new post!

Unfortunately no DC8's tonight!!!

Cheers

Rich

[EGNXR]

Hi Rich,

I belive 484BCF is PH-SVX PAY2

http://www.airframes.org/reg/phsvx
http://www.libhomeradar.org/aircraft/PH-SVX.html

3F9330 reported as 38+48 F4 on one of the mil forums but not 100% confirmed as tactical codes are sometimes reused

EDIT :- 3xF4 Refueling with a KC10 up Scotland way
HTH John

[Squad 701]

Air Force 1 on the box between 05.45 and 06.33 from Dublin.
On it's way to Saudi Arabia, looks like I missed it by about 10mins,
if it did go overhead Dublin, not a happy camper :-(

[GlynH]

Yeah I logged AF1 also...467 messages from it between 06:20 - 06:59 but start altitude reported as 30975 and end altitude reported as flying at 5775 feet - disinformation I would think or was he coming down for a reason en-route to Saudi?

...a little earlier;

ADFEB5 74-0787 BE- Boeing E-4B (747-200B) US Mil 2 Callsign BOSS87
Clocked 1065 messages Start altitude 33000 - End altitude 8000 between 05:30 - 06:16


...and a few hours later;

ADFEB7 98-0001 B752 Boeing C-32A (757-2G4) US Mil 2 Callsign S91

Clocked 298 messages from it flying through at 33,000ft between 08:58 - 09:27

Not looked any harder to see what else might have come through...

*UPDATE* I did notice a few 'interesting' callsigns from 'unrecognised' US Mil aircraft although I have used up all of my 151 punts on airframes.org so couldn't check out the type, F-15 escort maybe?

REAPR11 (formerly known as GRIM11 & RAMBO11) AE25D5
MUGGER23 AE2D01
EAGLE12 AE2CF6
DEADLY23 (also formerly known as GRIM11 & REAPR11) AE2817
DEDLY21 (formerly known as HITMN21 HOSER21 DEATH21) AE2803

Regards,
-=Glyn=-