Christmas-Tree

[jimjim1]

Images for posterity

I coudn't get the track up in flightradar34.

I have copied the image from the bbc article and posted it here for those similarly afflicted.

I have tried to make them pprune friendly however the images are not quite as I expected. Will have to do for now.

[ATC Watcher]

Originally Posted by SloppyJoe

Enter a hold where you want the circle, once you turn hit immediate exit.

Interesting but that is on an FMS, my question was how to do it on a flight plan (i.e. on the ground) using the current flight plan format.

[Semaphore Sam]

U.S. Navy more impressive...especially the orbs. Sam

[c_coder]

ATC Watcher,

Do you mean the pilot's HMI, or the ATC HMI? Its easy enough to design a trajectory like that in Eurocat. You just go CRTE and click the points you want. The resulting FPL message has a string of waypoints which can be named fixes or arbitrary coordinates.

[albatross]

A good FMS training exercise and fun too.

[ATC Watcher]

c coder : I was just curious how this was done .

First question is how you program the FMS ,must be lengthy I guess, or if , as I suggested it was done on a PC in an office and just uploaded on the aircraft FMS.

For the ATC, In this particular case it involved 4 ATC centers , , 3 in same country, 1 in another so it normally would need a form of flight plan readable by ATC . Unless the aircraft was under military control,(often done on test flights) then of course no detailed Flight plan is necessary. ( I can and will check that one) .

[J.O.]

It's an A380 and could easily receive an uplinked flight plan through ACARS. Even without that, it's not that big of a deal to load fifteen lat/long waypoints.

[Airbubba]

Some more on Christmas Trees from the FlightRadar24 blog post:

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/a...ith-airplanes/

[G-CPTN]

Meanwhile . . .

Virtual snowman created by cyclist using app on London streets.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Back in the days of standard primary radar with video maps etched on plates, our tels engineering friends would etch some plates with Christmas scenes. Quite a surprise in the middle of the night to suddenly see the map of the LTMA become a Christmas tree!