Cool things seen on FlightRadar

[red_slr]

Flown all the way from Edwards AFB and spent 6 hours flying round Florida now on its way back to Edwards by the looks of it.

[DJFish]

http://gcaptain.com/watch-hurricane-hunters-fly-ey...

[Magog]

Assumed this was one of the met/MI5 spy planes when I heard it early this morning.

[towser44]

He did the same thing out of East Midlands and came over us in Macclesfield a couple of weeks ago. Perfect circle!

[Rubymurray]

Looks like they're calibrating the VOR, I think brookmans park is somewhere near the centre of that circle

[V8LM]

Rubymurray said:

Looks like they're calibrating the VOR, I think brookmans park is somewhere near the centre of that circle

Spot on.

[Ginetta G15 Girl]

I would suggest the calibration is more to do with the DME than the VOR.

You don't need to fly a constant radius circle to calibrate a VOR.

[Steve_D]

Bear with me here as I'm not a pilot but how the hell do you fly such a perfect circle, in this case at least twice?

Steve

[LHRFlightman]

Magog said:

Assumed this was one of the met/MI5 spy planes when I heard it early this morning.

G-FCSL is owned by Flight Calibration Services, they do our ILS calibrations so this certainly wasn't an MI5 flight. Those operate from a west London airport that isn't Heathrow.

[LHRFlightman]

Steve_D said:

Bear with me here as I'm not a pilot but how the hell do you fly such a perfect circle, in this case at least twice?

Steve

That aircraft has some very clever equipment on it, that allows it to do just that. My understanding is that to calibrate any instrument system you need to be able to place your aircraft exactly where those systems should be, and then the calibration work begins to get that system exactly in the right place.

[Rubymurray]

The DME of a VOR/DME stands for digital measuring equipment. Very simply, it tells you how far away from the beacon you are in nautical miles.
To fly a circle like that, you just need to maintain a constant distance from the beacon whilst banking in a turn. If the number decreases, you're getting closer to the beacon and so reduce the angle of bank you're flying. Likewise, if the number increases then increase the angle of bank slightly.
Modern flight computers on bigger planes are able to follow a DME arc automatically

[Ginetta G15 Girl]

Rubymurray said:

The DME of a VOR/DME stands for digital measuring equipment.

Pssst. It's Distance Measuring Equipment.

[Rubymurray]

Ginetta G15 Girl said:

Rubymurray said:

The DME of a VOR/DME stands for digital measuring equipment.

Pssst. It's Distance Measuring Equipment.

Good spot, damn you auto correct!

[PRTVR]

A quick light aircraft................. speed and rate of clime

goggled its call sign and it was a F15
The TARTN11 at the top right of the screen shot is a RAF tanker aircraft, the FA20 near whitby is a falcon of chobham aviation.

[red_slr]

Good spot

[Ginetta G15 Girl]

PRTVR said:

goggled its call sign and it was a F15

F15E Strike Eagle out of Lakenheath.

[SpamCan]

Looking at where it was circling it may have also been playing on the Donna Nook gunnery range.

[RicksAlfas]

This was disturbing my holiday.
Couldn't see it, but it was noisy!

[alangla]

An A350 doing touch & gos.
In Stornoway?
https://www.flightradar24.com/AIB77WB/ba0cb37

[weeboot]

It's from Toulouse, isn't that Airbus' base? Presume they're carrying out tests.