Flightradar24 Interesting Finds

MossRoad · May 16, 2025

orezok said:
When I was in college in El Paso, we lived about 2 miles off the end of the main runway at Briggs Field. Nuclear equipped B52’s were stationed there. Every month or 2 they would do an emergency scramble exercise. First the KC135 tankers would take off, spaced about 15 to 30 seconds apart. Then the 52’s would go, same spacing. Crossed the house at less than 1000’.

It seemed about 10 minutes of deafening roar.

I never thought about if one of them would crash.

Just the thought of a B-52 with a big load of fuel would be scary on its own. 'The Bomb' wouldn't go off, but it could make for contamination for sure.

orezok · May 17, 2025

I’ve been watching this Alaska Airline jet trying to land at Palm Springs for about 15 or 20 minutes. He did 2 misssed approaches before getting it on the ground on the third try.

Wind was favorable from the northwest at 20 so that should not have been an issue.

Must have been a learner-earner pilot

bcp · May 18, 2025

Lots of swirly winds coming through the pass and around the mountain just to the west of Palm Springs. Landings often feel like a carnival ride.

Palm Springs is at the foot of the mountain over the left side white car. The pass is over the billboard. The mountains on each side are 11,000+- high.

Bruce

dmccarty · May 22, 2025

MossRoad said:
Just the thought of a B-52 with a big load of fuel would be scary on its own. 'The Bomb' wouldn't go off, but it could make for contamination for sure.

"would'nt" should be "should'nt"

and thankfully, in all of the accidents with fission and fusion weapons, some of which were dropped, they never went off.

However, the B-52 that crashed over NC, did loose two of it's fusion weapons and one bomb was only one switch away from a fusion weapon going off in rural, eastern NC.

The Wiki is very detailed, 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash - Wikipedia

Bill Stevens, a nuclear weapon safety engineer at Sandia, gave the following assessment in an internal documentary film produced by Sandia in 2010: "Some people can say, 'hey, the bomb worked exactly like designed.' Others can say, 'all but one switch operated, and that one switch prevented the nuclear detonation.'"

To make it more interesting, one of the fusion bombs buried itself in a field. There is an historical marker for the incident and you can see the stand of trees in Google Maps/Earth where the bomb hit. They were only able to recover PART of the weapon. The secondary stage of the bomb that takes the weapon from a fission to a fusion explosion is still in the field but deeply buried.

Excavation of the second bomb was complicated by the freezing cold, a high water table, and the extreme muddiness. Pumps were used to remove water, and the sides of the crater were reinforced with plywood, but it was decided after digging down to 42 feet (13 m) to abandon the effort. The fusion "secondary" of the second weapon was never recovered.[44] The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill subsequently determined the buried depth of the secondary component to be 180 ± 10 feet (55 ± 3 m)

There were a number of airplane accidents with fission and fusion weapons and it is amazing that none of the weapons had a nuclear explosion. Sometimes the conventional explosives would go off but the fission/fusion components did not. Thankfully.

orezok · Jun 3, 2025

What is this U2 doing?

MossRoad · Jun 3, 2025

Taking pictures.

bcp · Jun 3, 2025

Taking the "before" pictures for the 2025 San Andreas earthquake.

Bruce

orezok · Jun 3, 2025

bcp said:
Taking the "before" pictures for the 2025 San Andreas earthquake.

Bruce

That’s a possibility, but most of the “tracks” are south of the fault.

MossRoad · Jun 3, 2025

bcp said:
Taking the "before" pictures for the 2025 San Andreas earthquake.

Bruce

Redbug · Jun 7, 2025

Just a little west of Dothan, Alabama is the Army's training school for helicopters. There are 3 Army airfields around Daleville and Enterprise...and at times...even at night you may see a flock of helos going around in the area training.

MossRoad · Jun 9, 2025

I saw a military plane icon this weekend and it was a P51 Mustang.

Redbug · Jun 12, 2025

Around 5am (eastern time) the big daily UPS and Fedex movement starts. The UPS hub is at Louisville, KY and Fedex hub is at Memphis TN. Massive takeoffs of the planes loaded and headed to all parts of the country and elsewhere. Where I live (Columbia SC) about 9 of those large aircraft are at the local hub during the day getting reloaded.

Carl_NH · Jun 12, 2025

Two kc46a on refuel mission

Carl_NH · Jun 12, 2025

Carl_NH said:
Two kc46a on refuel mission View attachment 3578676 View attachment 3578677

dmccarty · Jun 13, 2025

orezok said:
What is this U2 doing?

View attachment 3544095

That is a really odd pattern. I wonder what NASA is doing.

If this was a USAF U2 and if there were USN exercises off shore, I would have expected the U2 to just fly a race track pattern. A few days ago, I saw a YouTube video of an interview with a U2 pilot that was interesting. He would not say how how the U2 can fly, just 70,000+ feet.

He did say the flights can be long and boring. The sensors can see quite a distance away from the plane and the U2 has been used as a communication node though he did not mention the communication aspect of the plane.

I see KC135s and KC46s every day on the flight tracking websites. Some fly out and back routes but many, like one right now, is flying a race track pattern near/over Pamilco Sound. Many weekdays there is a KC135 flying that pattern near/over Pamlico Sound. There are KC46s at Seymour Johnson AFB that almost always fly in pairs and a certain altitude which makes them easy to see among the passenger flights. The KC46s fly some odd routes. They have a call sign of BackyXX.

Sometimes I will see drones up and they are in race track or circular patterns. The USCG C130s will sometimes fly circles which I think is training because it is always in the same location near their base. I have seen them flying a mowing the grass pattern which I assume was an actual search operation.