Living quite close to Brize, we see a lot of Voyagers, Atlases, and, for the time being, Hercs. Today, something rather odd: an A-400M, flying a standard orbit pattern at 7000ft (according to Flightradar24) aligned roughly 280 (degrees) over Little Rissington, for about an hour. The odd thing is that it was trailing what looked like short contrails. At 7000ft?
A rather poor pic - but you can see the trails.
Looking through binoculars, I could see the trails emanating from the wing trailing edge, between the outboard engines and the wingtips - i.e. not wingtip vortices, nor engine exhausts.
I even rang Brize ops to ask if it was dumping fuel. A very nice duty ops officer told me it was definitely not dumping, but that it was doing a trial. No more details.
Anyone else think it’s rather odd? Any ideas?
Yes OK, I’ll try and get out more, soon as Covid is over.
airsound