To bloody hate flight radar

[witchofzog]

I am away at the moment with friends in a house about half hour from the nearest airport. It's a huge European airport. They have all gone inside for a snooze and I am outside on a sun lounger to read my book.

Except I can't read my bloody book cos it turns out we are on the flight path and there are loads of planes passing over. I seem to have developed a bit of an obsession with wanting to know where planes are going and have come from so I can't even read more than a couple of pages without having to flick back to bloody flight radar to check. I do this at home too but the planes seem to be every hour or so there. Here it's relentless.

I have already broken off twice from this post to work out that the planes passing are from Munich and Gothenburg respectively. This enhances my life in no way at all yet I can't help myself.

It was Mumsnet who told me about Flight Radar. Who do I complain to?!

Lots of lightening in Frankfurt at the moment

Itsallgoingtobefine Why oh why did you tell me this. That sounds even more distracting

NASA have Spot the Space Station;
spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/index.cfm

And there's Geo Guesser - guess where you are on a map;
geoguessr.com/

Damn you witch, I was going to do some work this afternoon...

Now I'm tracking the female world champion helicopter pilot over Monmouth in her very smart chopper

lion I really don't know!! I just find it fascinating. It was Mumsnet that got me into it

I need this in my life. Where is it and how do I get it?

If you want something a bit slower paced, my DB informs me there is a site where you can track shipping. He used it to follow his new car all the way from Korea.

You know there's an app right? With an augmented reality mode so you look at the sky through the camera on your phone and planes going past that you see live on your screen via the camera are labelled...

I need that to go alongside the app that does that with constellations! Hours of distraction

Upstart You have taken it to a whole new level now. Geo Guess is brilliant!! I will never read my book now dammit

Just pour a massive gin and give into it? Ditch the book

Its brilliant, isn't it

Am I not getting Geoguess? I just had pictures of roads with trees! No way of knowing where I was

If you want something a bit slower paced, my DB informs me there is a site where you can track shipping. He used it to follow his new car all the way from Korea.

There is. I used to go out with a container ship captain, and used to track his ship sometimes. It's given me an abiding curiosity for the Aleutian Islands, which he seemed to spend a disproportionate amount of time cruising past.

So going to introduce DS1 and myself to Flight Radar next time we're at my parents', which is under the Heathrow flight path.

What is the barn ok? We can tell you the ending?

BeachyUmbrella Drive along the road until you reach a clue.

Am I not getting Geoguess? I just had pictures of roads with trees! No way of knowing where I was confused

But there is - the road markings, the cars, the landscape. I'm good at the States and Europe but rubbish at anything that looks European but is actually African.

if you go on holiday and you're not on a flight path, you'll probably be on the beach and then you can track the boats.

We once sat on a lovely marina, having a very romantic lunch, while I looked up every yacht that pulled in and found out where it had come from and where it was going

I am under both the flight path and the helicopter flight path here and am totally spoilt for choice

My 13 year old dd is an absolute ace geo guessr. I think she chose geography as one of her S3 subjects because of it.

I live less than a mile from the end of NCL runway. I bloody love it, especially the arrival of the daily Emirates flight which comes over so low you can occasionally feel it.

I live under the Heathrow flight path and also near a small private airfield. There are planes every 2 minutes. I am OBSESSED!

Don't forget that you can also track earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and flocks of migrating birds. Speaking of birds, there are those peregrines on nestcam at Norwich Cathedral again this year.

I was just about to shout YABVVVVVU then realised its's just because you're a fellow addict.
In that case, YADNBU and crack on

What's a flight radio???

Oh wow! I did not know you could do this! We live under a busy flight path for Heathrow I would love to know this! What do you use to see the info??

Sorry, this isn't helping you at all!

OMG!!! This is amazing. And you can see the flight paths and everything. Thought nothing would happen near me as no where near a major airport, but forgot about the tiny one, with apparently, a flight school! Little planes all over the place. And then a bunch of private pilots meandering around.

OMG, it's just dawned on me that Flight Radar might identify the WWII planes that pass over during the airshow season, instead of me hobbling out into the garden and squinting at a disappearing dot.

You rotter, OP. Now I'll be glued to it too.