Mystery Adelaide Stealth Bugsmasher
 

Been spending a few days in Adelaide and after sunset have been hearing a turboprop aircraft high above in the gloom. Caught my ear as it's using a low power setting - so not trying to go anywhere in a hurry. Keeps coming back every 5 minutes or so. Not an Orion as I know those things just retired, and it sounds different anyway. Staying with fellow aviators so we'd sit in the back yard drinking beers trying to eye it as it seemed a bit curious. Pretty obvious it's not flying with lights on - well, if they are they are rather dim and no strobes.
It's also not on Flightradar24.

The other night it the gloom before it got too dark we got a visual - single engine, probably a Caravan, doing racetracks maybe 10k' or a bit lower. Is this a normal Adelaide thing? Drilling holes in the sky high up going nowhere in particular??

Federal Police has Caravans and King Air's with infra red and everything else for detecting drug crops.

Sounds like Survey 400, usually between 8 and 12k.

When over Melbourne, the laps seem to take closer to 10 minutes and it appears to be an identical track each time. C208.

Probably not enough crops in downtown Adelaide to warrant a Caravan or Kingair overhead!

Last year we had to put up with a similar situation, a single engine turboprop doing endless large high level orbits over Canberra, daylight hours. Looked like a PC21 when I got the binoculars out. Never found out what it was doing, but if I recall correctly it went on for weeks.

SAPOL in Adelaide uses the Caravan for surveillance because it doesn't attract the same attention a chopper does. And by surveillance, I mean tracking vehicles & also doing other things like trying to locate idiots shining lasers at aircraft.on approach into YPAD. It goes incognito - no lights & it can't even be tracked on any of the flight apps.

DF.

If that’s the case, then how do you know it’s there DF? :E

Because I listen to ATC & I know the callsign.

DF.

Sorry…. that was supposed to be a joke!

Spot on.

It is supposed to be a secret like chemtrails.

Correct DF - secret squirrel stuff by SA Police.
I got banned off a Farcebook site for bringing it up a year or so ago 😡
It was even operating at night no lights no transponder showing on FR at 0100 and later - kept me awake like a blooming mossie 😡😡

Maybe towing a classified banner?

Thanks all.

It was the lack of lights and FR24 that got us wondering. Now we (probably) know!

Similar situation in Victoria. VicPol have a King Air that doesn't appear on the usual apps. (Choppers AW139 too)

Yep. Hearing "intentions unknown" from ATC still gets me a bit worried if I happen to be flying at the time, but knowing they're there does force you to keep a good lookout!

Yes, but I have found the VICPOL helicopters on the adsbexchange live tracking website when they're not showing on FR24

ADSB exchange doesn’t redact or observe LADD
so it’ll be there. Try that next time you hear it.

Vicpol aircraft all appear on FR24, however it only shows the aircraft type such as “AW139.” Luckily the crooks don’t know what an AW139 (head banging icon).

They do show up on AvTraffic as PolAir30 or otherwise. I know for a fact that “shady” people use AvTraffic to track them and the air wing are aware of this, however it appears that they may be powerless to stop it or have not reached an agreement with the AvTraffic guy… or so it was alleged by the person that told me that rumour.

Chemtrail seeding for the Xmas period!