FlightRadar activity

[JamMakingWannaBe]

There's a RAF Typhoon on manoeuvres around Peterborough. I've not seen one before as I thought all RAF flights were "classified".

This happens all the time. Often see them on flight radar

2 have not long taken off from lossiemouth too..

They're on there every day.

I'm watching them too...

There are two of them now!

You can get military only on military freedar
military.freedar.uk/VirtualRadar/mobile.html

I'm going to lose another hour on this now!

Can someone from Deeside confirm there's still enough daylight to be up in a glider, or do they have lights in the plane?

Really standard operations, nothing to get giddy about (thankfully)

The Lossiemouth pair are on "straight line formation" practice and one of the Coningsby pair is on "wiggly line" practice! Love it!!

Well I think something is going on! The two planes from Lossiemouth rendezvoused with two planes from Darlington over the North Sea then "disappeared" and they are not on the military tracker website. Definitely a covert mission...!
Hope everyone out flying tonight gets home soon.

Routine night flying at Coningsby. 🙂

I think the military can turn their squawks (ability to be tracked) on and off, whereas civilian flights always have their squawks switched on. Often there might be fighter aircraft around that you can't see (squawks turned off), but the presence of military tanker aircraft squawking in the general area kind of gives it away that there are probably fighters (or other unseen aircraft) up there too.

Something to do with this one maybe?

There's an exercise off the Lincs coast.

It is a bit hit and miss as to whether Typhoons have their transponders on. But blimey they are noisy and not exactly stealth.

I live next to a range, It is 50/50 whether or not transponders are on, even in peace time. Not necessarily anything to do with covert missions.

Have a look over Salisbury and N Wales, you’re likely to see more exercises there as well as from Mildenhall / Lakenheath.

I'm finding it quite amusing that West Yorkshire police seem to be having a few problems finding Brighton (possibly because it's not in West Yorkshire)

There's quite a few NOTAMs for today off the east coast. They all read 'Danger area restriction activated'.

Look for the red circles on this map and click on them:

www.notaminfo.com/ukmap

I follow my husband's RnR flights home and they're all RAF 😂 still manage to see them on Flight Radar so I can time the drive to Brize Norton airbase

Totally normal. They disappear when they drop below a certain altitude. Often see some really interesting training exercises over north wales with multiple military aircraft. Not all of them show up on FR but plenty do.

Last August, Flight Radar was crowded with the continuous flights across Europe and into Afghanistan for the massive evacuation from there. There were a consistent number of tankers in the air 24/7.

More recently I have been watching the tankers and occasional other craft above the coast of Romania and over the Russian Black Sea Fleet. There is currently a Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk (sign "FORTE11") at 52,000 feet and it appears here frequently flying out from Sigonella, Sicily. I believe they can fly continuously for 36 hours, probably longer these days.

Wikipedia article here.

Poland is sometimes worth watching. A few weeks ago I saw a couple of airborne command posts flying endless circuits over Poland, right next to the border with Ukraine.

I've watched that plane before. It often has bizarre routes.

I think it lives in Doncaster.

Sometimes they show up sometimes they don't. I live next to an RAF base and will often hear planes but not on Flight Radar

Though recently a B52 showed up

In simple terms military aircraft generally have the kit that provides the data the trackers use turned on or off, depending on circumstances.

These days they tend to be "on" if they are sharing airspace with civilian traffic since the system helps provide information to other aircraft in the area and air traffic control.

They tend to go dark/off in areas where there's little civilian traffic and they don't want the general public and others seeing what they are up to.