Back to the incident which prompted this thread...
I have been in touch with the pilot concerned (thank you if you are reading this) and obtained the following information:
Position of Airprox - 8Nm NW of BHX
Aircraft heading - Orbit
True airspeed - 80 kts
FL/Alt/Ht - 1500ft QNH 1022
Aircraft attitude - Turning right
Phase of flight - Cruise
Weather conditions - Visibility 30km + CAVOK Night
Date and time - 02 May 2008 2250 BST
Description of other aircraft;
Type - Unidentified/Radio controlled aircraft
Markings, colour, lighting - 2 blue/green lights
Aircraft attitude - Controlled flight level orbit
First sighting distance - Est. 100m
Minimum horizontal and vertical separation - Possibly as close as 50m
Form of avoiding action taken - Orbit tightened to maintain
visual contact. Once established tried to ID + then I flew away.
Tried to re-establish visual contact, but not able to.
Other relevant factors - Vision good
ACAS (eg TCAS)- Fitted, TA indicated - No, RA indicated - No
How did you report the airprox - By radio, to Radar, Freq 118.050
Classification of flight - Public Transport, Police Operations,
Non scheduled passenger, Commercial.
Description of Airprox - Front observer saw strange lights flying
around a/c. Visual contact established by pilot and a/c
manoeuvred to avoid collision + identify lights. Lights circled
a/c at same height, flew away North then returned. Contact broken
by flying East to Birmingham city and from a lower height, to
enable lights to be seen against a dark sky, a/c returned to
area. No sighting. Open land in area searched with thermal camera
for radio controlled a/c landing site, but nothing obvious found.
I believe it was a radio controlled fixed wing a/c with lights to
assist with night flying. It was purposely flown around us.
The intent could be sinister or just someone "messing about."
However, in Northern Ireland a threat to aircraft was believed to
be radio controlled planes. Which could be flown to "cause damage".
Birmingham Radar was informed at the time, and as would be
expected, nothing was seen on radar possibly due to size.
- Ground speed of aircraft at particular stages of the event. - 92mph/69mph
- Direction of orbit of lights - Anticlockwise
- did the crew attempt to capture the lights on camera? If so,
what was the outcome? - Yes. Nothing captured on video.
- Event duration: Approximately 10 minutes