Circles in the sky
 

From time to time from my strip in South Lincolnshire I observe the contrails of a large jet flying a circular route over an area of 50 miles or so.

These flight sometimes go on for an hour or more which leave concentric circles in the sky which show there is little deviation from the circular route flown.

I've identified the aircraft type as E-3 Sentries and can only assume they are on flight test and possibly out of Lakenheath, as the circular route would encompass that base.

It's been bugging me for sometime now and I'm sure there's someone knowledgeable out there that can put me right.

Thanks

Do you mean like this?

http://i367.photobucket.com/albums/o...rbit160112.jpg

http://i367.photobucket.com/albums/o...wide160112.jpg

It caused widespread panic back in mid January as people thought it was a hijacked airliner and they called their local radio stations, etc. However, it was just another routine E3 Sentry training sortie.

Please excuse the quality, but I had to shrink them down in size for the mods...

SB

There are various E-3 orbit areas in the UK and abroad. The crew will generally pick whichever orbit fits in best with the nature of the sortie.

The E-3 will be set to fly a ground track, prevailing winds aloft will carry the contrails away from the orbit area.

RAF E-3s are based at Waddington.

Thanks, I thought it was something of that nature but should have considered training sorties as an alternative to my assumption of lengthy flight tests following maintenance.

Quite used to seeing Waddington based Sentries letting down/climbing away north of my location, I'm naturally assuming these are Lakenheath based, given their positioning well to the SE of my place!

Fixed... :E

Damn it! PTT beat me to it lol :D

Weather sat image over North Sea

http://www.earthstation1.com/Aircraf...ary/aurora.jpg

Rogcal,

If you saw the aircraft on the 16th January then it was a NATO E-3 Sentry from Geilenkirchen, Germany. This is the aircraft in the great images posted by Sunshine Band.

Link to image of NATO E-3 on 16th January.

http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/l...rige/199pb.jpg

The chemtrail loons were getting all worked up over the sighting. These are the people that believe that persistent contrails only appeared in the late 1990s and that they are being poisoned by the 'spraying'.

Circling aircraft revealed to be from NATO - Local - Louth Leader

NATO AWACS

UFO's or just lost! Take your pick!!:ok::ok::ok::ok::ok:

Ah forget crop circles, they have now reached a new height :cool::D:=:ok:

Do they orbit the other way south of the equator?

They have to orbit clockwise half the time, anti-clockwise the other half, on every sortie no matter where in the world they are.

If they don't the ground crew get very unhappy as they have to tow it round in circles, as appropriate, on the ground after they've landed.

Do they rotate the 'mushroom' in the same direction as the orbit or in the opposite direction?

"Circle in the Sky" - wasn't that a song by Belinda Carlisle?

Oh, hang on, it was "Circle in the Sand".

I remember now, "Circle in the Sky" was by the Bangles (who might have been doing circles in the sand when they sang "walk like an Egyptian).

Mister B

Nothing so traditional as circular orbits down here. A bit more freedom from airspace restrictions that get in the way up north, and a few other good reasons not to draw circles in the sky :ok:

Y_G

And if they fly on the Equator they just do straight and level or do they just drop out of the sky in a vertical descent?

No bovver, they hover.

is it chem trail profile Bravo 3 this month or are we repeating another Bravo 2?

And have the new dispersal nozzles been fitted?

They are fitted but dormant at the moment - they need an increase in solar flare activity to activate upper atmosphere ionisation before they become effective......:cool:

Latest Matthew Reilly novel perchance?

In respect of the weather sat image posted earlier in this thread, I posted it on a local non aviation forum and described the concentric contrails as being formed over East Anglia and blown over the North Sea by a SW wind but a reader of that forum has posted a differing opinion and contends the contrails were formed over the North Sea and were blown towards East Anglia by a NE wind.

As there is no date on the satellite image I cannot look in the weather archive to confirm the wind direction either way.

Help!

Rogcal,

They seem to be formed over the North Sea as they get more dispersed as the head over Eastern England.

If you work on the assumption that a new contrail will be a lot tighter and better defined than an old contrail which has been subjected to the wind, then the contrails over the North Sea are a lot tighter (like a sharp pencil) than those over Essex / Sussex (like a smudged charcoal line).

If that were the case, it would suggest the contrails originated overland with the latest contrails at the time of imaging being over the North Sea i.e a SW-NE track.

However, I think the image was taken on 15 Apr 1993 if its the same one as I found on another old thread. That one looked like EO / false colour where as this one is a radar image, so I can't be 100% certain.

The contrails of the North Sea do look tighter, and appear to 'originate' from a known orbit area in the N. Sea. The contrails over land, however, do not correspond to a designated orbit area.

The picture suggests the aircraft had orbited over a dozen times and, with each orbit taking the same time in minutes as is the radius of the orbit @300kts, thus making the total time in the observed orbit as around 3 hours. The vector of the contrail therefore suggests a prevailing wind at altitude of ~030 degrees @60 kts.

All very '-ish', maths-wise, I should add.

As E-3 orbits are situated away from airways and areas of high activity, it would seem logical that the orbit is over the N.Sea.... it would be most unusual for an E-3 to be sitting over the Home Counties.

:D I'll have to try harder - ty WW, YG and Melchett.

I thought the dome rotation had to be changed every 100 turns as it would either over tighten too tight or unscrew and come off./

Rogcal,

Sequence of 2009 satellite images showing contrails from an RAF E-3 Sentry off the east coast of the UK.

BBC News - How aircraft contrails form cloud

Source

Circular aircraft contrails off the east coast of England - DSRS Image Gallery

From

Aircraft Contrails images - DSRS Image Gallery

DSRS Image Gallery

Nice to see members of the USAF playing with the chemtrail community! The chemtrail buffoons actually thought the KC-10 crewmember was a whistleblower!

The original "KC-10 spreading chemtrails" spoof video

The video shows a KC-10 forming an aerodynamic contrail.



KC-10 aircrew channel

USAFFEKC10A's Channel - YouTube

Italian chemtrail buffoon and his manipulation of the video. The nozzles! :ugh:

The insider: chemtrails KC-10 sprayer air to air - The proof



KC-10 aircrew response

Given that the contrails can be seen both from the ground and from space surely any self-respecting crew would be trying their utmost to stop merely giving us circles and draw a massive cock in the wide blue yonder?

You mean à la J**k B****? :E

So what no-ones explained is how do all these create the associated phenomema of crop circles?
Surely one of you whistle blowers can answer that one for us?

orca, I tried to persuade the pilots to do so on many occasions, to no avail.

And 'twas similar reasoning used by myself to explain certain 'random' navigational maneuvers.

Cost me a sh1t load of beer tokens after landing though.

There was a tale regarding some RAFVR pilot doing just that one Sunday morning over Scotland. This piece of aeronautical art then drifted gently over Edinburgh, greatly upsetting religious sensitivities on the Sabbath.

Some very senior Jockistani god-botherer rang Leuchars and explained that his flock were rather miffed at the obscene item floating overhead. "Very sorry", he was told, "we'll sort it out!". A significant number of Meteors launched, then formed up in line abreast before flying through the floating cock. Some deft manoeuvring and they reappeared at 90º off the earlier attack heading, completed the task and went home for tea.

The result being that, if no-one had loooked up and noticed the aerial phenomenon in the first place, they certainly saw it after the attempt to cross it out!

As I said, a tale. It may not be true, but I'd like to think that it is!