"No Callsign" over London
 

Anyone know anything about Reims Cessna F406 G-TDSA and PA31 G-UMMI which have been operating at FL90-100 over London (E M25 and just E of LHR respectively) this morning ?

(data from FR24)

Regards

They might well have been using the registrations as callsigns. I saw G-TDSA at around 9.20z over Finchampstead heading for the London area and FR24 provided the ID.

Flights of the nature you describe are not unusual over London and are often involved with OS mapping or other aerial surveys,

Many thanks, HD.

(Originally I'd wondered about conflicts with inbound LHR flights. On reflection I guess anything heading for LHR around Twickenham would be significantly lower. I assume it's still a bit interesting for the ATC folks though!)

IHF

You may find GTDSA replaces GBWLF which used to do similar flights.

Those will be the callsigns - not every operator has a dedicated callsign and the vast majority use registration.

As far as I know G-UMMI is operated by 2 excel, that's Andy offer and Chris Norton's outfit) and the old lady of the skies (G-UMMI) may well be involved in trials of a collision avoidance system. I understand G-SA sometimes works for the police.

The CAA GINFO site shows TDSA belonging to a leasing company in Surbiton and UMMI to a company in Northampton.

Anyone who wants the full details can access the publicly available GINFO site themselves.

Given that they are doing these trials over West London, let's hope they are successful. :O

Indeed ;) !

Thanks, as ever, for the input.

(Off topic - there wouldn't be a a Bristolian theme in your byline would there, Merchant Venturer ?)

G UMMI is often up and about. Observed last week broadly following route of M40 with orbits over Banbury etc before a lengthy detail over Birmingham.

They also have a B727, observed on FR24 over Cambridgeshire and South Lincs on Thursday using a 'Broadsword' callsign.

G-UMMI over now over North London flyong round in circles!! FR24 track suggests it set out from Northolt.

Possibly standing in for a u/s Islander?

...then it's probably best not to discuss it on here.

He he! Lets all pretend it wasn't one of those grey Islanders that no one knows the Army haven't been using for sigint for decades because people on prune like to pretend they don't exist and we'd give the game away if we admitted to seeing them. Anyway, as long as no one on pprune mentions them the people who might actually be bothered by them won't know, because we won't tell them they don't actually exist, and let's face it, no one else knows, do they?


Are they supposed to be a secret then? Wups!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britten-Norman_Defender

nb. this link does not work and refers to something that isn't actually there at all.


The RAF operate two Marks of Islander, they are known as a CC.2 (ZH536) and a CC.2A (ZF573) and form the Station Flight at RAF Northolt near London. These two aircraft are flown in a classified surveillance role, aimed at picking up communications between individuals judged as posing a threat to the UK.

That from a mere 30 seconds on a search engine that also doesn't exist...

As a side issue to all the other things going round in circles (must be soul destroying for the crew :{ ) a 'survey' Piper Aztec or similar was flying in a very low orbit near one's abode recently, perhaps taking photos/film for some developer. I would guess that it was around 500ft AGL, so low that the registration could be read with the naked eye….Legal, allowable etc etc, but what chance would they have to avert a potential disaster if the engines had trouble, especially bearing in mind the very dense urban environment below ? I would suggest none, and the poor sods under their path would suffer.



SHJ

If it was an urban environment that would be a "congested area of a town city or settlement" which would require a minimum height of 1,000 above the highest point within 600 metres of the aircraft - there are exceptions but am commenting on the circumstances described.

So 500 ft would be in contravention.

SHJ, there was a Partenavia tooling around the Croydon area at lowish level on Saturday (I'd have guessed it was at 1000'), and a photographer I know of through work was planning on doing some aerial photography around London yesterday - he usually uses a Seneca with the door off and whenever I've seen him at work, the aircraft is at least 1000'.

When I got up early yesterday, a C406 (G-FIND?) was just finishing an impressively neat series of NE/SW runs across Gatwick at about 10000', each perhaps 15 miles long - quite a grid formed by the trace on FR24.

Once saw a banner towing C172 orbiting Croydon at well under 1000' - our offices are around 180' off the ground and at times it looked to be nearly level with us...

Was he calling "Danny Boy"?:ok:

As we all know judging the height of aircraft by sight is littered with falsehoods and depends on so many factors being taken into account, such as perspective, light, reference points and so on, BUT if I were to go out on a limb, I'd say the plane was at half to two thirds the visual height of The Shard (1000ft) and seemed to be at the halfway point, therefore 500ft give or take.


SHJ

All the above aircraft have been very busy lately - some on survey work - believed to be Env Agency flood related work and others who spend so much time in tight orbits they must get dizzy whilst listening.

The protection of the realm, and it's 'infrastructure's,' ought to be to be of primary and enormous import to all the 'bona fide' contributor's to this forum.

I work in the 'telecom' industry and it really does concern me about the amount of speculation, albeit, 'innocently' proffered that is 'aired' on here.

My brother, who is a builder' was going about his lawful business, doing alterations to his own daughter's large detached property when trading standards and the police turned up to do a 'spot-check.'

Although all his documents were in order, he told them nowt about, why and, what he was doing there.

DO NOT DISCUSS MONITORING, OR, OTHER POTENTIALLY SENSITIVE ISSUES ON HERE.............