anyone know why a eurofighter would be constantly circling a light aircraft at 2500ft

[helirobin]

on our s.w. shropshire hilltop have just watched a typhoon in a very high nose up attitude [to keep it flying slowly enough] constantly making large circuits culminating in close fly psts of a light plane; they are heading E.S.E from us west of Bishop's Castle with the jet making unbelievable noise as it tries to keep itself in the air while going so slowly, anyone know why? [2.45/50 sunday afternoon bst]

[ralphmalph]

Practicing an intercept and shoot down! :eek:

[paco]

Lost?

Phil

[Whirlygig]

Maybe it was a real intercept and shoot down?

Cheers

Whirls

[eagleroll]

it was intercepted earlier today after squacking 7500

[ross_M]

How slow can they fly, even in that weird attitude.

[mmitch]

The RAF have held an exercise all this past week practicing affiliation for the Olympics.
Olympics Air Security (http://www.raf.mod.uk/news/archive/olympics-air-security-20032012)
mmitch.

[HueyDog]

A good looking girl is flying the ultralight and the Eurofighter pilot is trying to get her number?:}

[helirobin]

that exercise finished on the 22nd. so probably not part of that.

[jayteeto]

Typhoon on a sunday. Sounds for real!

[helicopter-redeye]

... squacking ...

??

In flight Sudoko system on MFD 3 playing up and causing nose high attitude and excessive engine noise?

[helirobin]

yes, really!! it was a typhoon, 3 of us watched it for at least 6 minutes trying to keep "down" to the speed of the [unknown type-the typhoon being much more interesting] light aircraft which was plodding across the sky. The first time we actually saw the full circuit [we'd heard the racket coming from the west for some minutes earlier] we thought the jet had actually not seen the light aircraft as it was slightly below and in front of it, but it became apparent that it was trying to circle the small plane and we watched at least 3 further "cicuits" made by the jet round the small plane.

[parabellum]

Sounds as though the light A/C may have lost radio contact and was heading towards busy airspace, ATC sent up an aircraft to get the attention of the pilot, also to check if pilot awake/alive and at the controls?

[bladeslapper]

Parabellum

Bishops Castle is our equivalent of the outback !

The Low Fly Area for RAF Shawbury Defence Helicopter School stretches in that direction, but they don't normally do anything until after a leisurely breakfast on a Monday morning.

Intriguing......

[Hummingfrog]

If it was a low wing, white, single engine, light aircraft then I probably know what what was happening but OFS act won't let me tell you :E.

HF

[helirobin]

yes, it was small, pale and single engined. The eurofighter was definitely a eurofighterr, every time it turned to circle round behind the light plane it banked over and gave us a ringside view of its canard and delta wing shape. We thought it was probably a security thing of some sort, it seemed such an odd occurance.

[JimBall]

Nothing secret. Training for OAS intercepts as per published protocol. Typhoon may also deploy flares. If they use a heli to intercept a heli they may use green laser and a "Follow Me".
Ignore all that at your peril!
See: Intercepts (http://www.rin.org.uk/resources.aspx?ID=472&SectionID=23)

[Variable Load]

Fantastic thread for Rotorheads :=

[500e]

Your all going to get a visit from the local operation P men:E

[Ian Corrigible]

VL,

To add a bit of relevance, and since the Taurus Mountain 2 exercise was mentioned earlier, extracts from a recent Av Week article:

Olympics Trial
Aviation Week & Space Technology (http://www.aviationnow.com) 03/19/2012

http://i.imgur.com/o4tOkdK.jpg

...Further additions to the normal QRA force structure will come from rotary-wing platforms. Royal Air Force Puma helicopters, as well as Lynx platforms operated by both the Navy and Army, are being added to mirror the practice—honed in Afghanistan—of gradual escalation of effect. If attempts to communicate visually with pilots of unresponsive aircraft fail, RAF Regiment sniper teams on board can use weapons such as warning flares, shotguns and rifles.

“Sniping from a helicopter isn’t new,” says Wing Cdr. Shane Anderson, commanding officer of the Puma-equipped 33 Sqdn., “but sniping from a helicopter at another aircraft is new for us. The French have had the capability for quite a long time, so we’ve had a look at that.”

“We’ve been working closely with the Typhoon, Sentry and Puma aircrews, just to ensure that we know exactly what each part of the layered defense is doing,” explains one sergeant in the RAF Regiment’s Sniper Training Team. “Every exercise takes it up a level, with more moving parts, so the guy who has sat behind the weapon system has the utmost confidence that at the moment he pulls that trigger he knows he’s doing the right thing.”

I/C

[Agaricus bisporus]

The answer is chillingly obvious. It hasn't got a gun and was powerless to do anything except try to frighten it into submission. Useless bloody waste of money.

[P6 Driver]

A good looking girl is flying the ultralight and the Eurofighter pilot is trying to get her number?http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/badteeth.gif

Or a good looking MAN is flying the ultralight and the Eurofighter pilot is trying to get HIS number, surely. In this day and age of "equality and diversity" I'm sure the RAF would thank you for some balance...

;)

[sycamore]

A-B, would you like to say that in front of a 27mm Mauser...?

[Agaricus bisporus]

No, I wouldn't. And had I known that after the much publicised anouncements that no gun was to be fitted, then that the gun would be fitted inert as ballast in lieu of concrete at 1/1,000,000th of the cost I hadn't noticed that they'd finally done the sensible thing (and who would have anticipated that?) and quietly decided to go back on all that idiocy and actually comission it after all. oops.
Use a 27mm canon on a microlight? Might work I suppose. Perhaps the pilot was orbiting ro see if there was anything substantial enough to be worth aiming at. Chucking his boots at it might work better...

[SuperF]

or maybe one of his mates was in the ultralight and he was saying hi!

or after radio calls, maybe the ultra light said, ill give you a race...

[Sir George Cayley]

Two things. 1) all this malarky applies to helicopters as well as fixed wing.
2) the rules of engagement permit when authorized the use of lethal force.

SGC