High Wing single engine circling over Burke, Va?

KeithASanford

KeithASanford

Line Up and Wait
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MyTurnToFly
My co-worker has noticed, for more than a week now, a single engine high wing plane(172 or 182) circling for hours over Burke, Annandale and Fairfax, Va. I thought he lived within the SFRA, but apparently, he doesn't.

Anybody have any idea what could be going on? Is this a continuation of the FBI surveillance from a couple of months ago or is it something else? Thanks, in advance for any insight offered!
 
Big brother and law enforcement are now using aircraft for surveillance .
 
Was it possibly a yellow 177? There's one that regularly flies powerline patrol up through Fairfax/Loudoun county. I used to watch him go by regularly (my office was in Sterling).
 
flyingron said:
Was it possibly a yellow 177? There's one that regularly flies powerline patrol up through Fairfax/Loudoun county. I used to watch him go by regularly (my office was in Sterling).
Click to expand...
Powerline/pipeline patrol aircraft generally don't circle for hours at a time.
 
henry_featured_photo_gallery.jpg
 
Ever since I put up an Rtl-sdr 1090 receiver I see them circling often. Weekly at least. At one point saw two of them circling same area with a 2k altitude difference.



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We had this in NYC recently, with N912EX, as well as with a helicopter (AStar/TwinStar) with a fake registration N779CB, callsign FLINT 04 (DEA).
Untitled8IIP8850.jpg
 
Yes, every night for the past week a Cessna 206 has been circling over NoVa. Registered to Bristow, VA
 
They're always circling. Someone played a cruel joke and painted a dinosaur scene on one wind screen and the world's fair on the other plane's windscreen. They're caught in the never ending "Odyssey of Flight 33.";)
 
Anthony said:
What is that?
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It's a software-defined radio, basically a USB dongle available for as low as $20 that lets one receive and decode ADS-B traffic and plot it on a map. By participating in various networks such as FloghtAware, PlaneFinder or FlightRadar24, one can participate in MLAT (basically triangulation) to plot non-ADS-B traffic that is only transmitting Mode S.
 
Mike I said:
We had this in NYC recently, with N912EX, as well as with a helicopter (AStar/TwinStar) with a fake registration N779CB, callsign FLINT 04 (DEA).
Untitled8IIP8850.jpg
Click to expand...

Why do you say it's a "fake registration"?
 
Yep... "OBR Leasing" - Bristow, VA.

I would think you'd have to be a big-time criminal to warrant this kind of surveillance.

Wouldn't "big-time criminals" at least check the flight tracking sites to ensure they're not under surveillance?


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The Burke circler is at it again. Tail number N208EB. My 1099 decoder's been following him for a while.

Code: 
Hex     Mode  Sqwk  Flight   Alt    Spd  Hdg    Lat      Long   Sig  Msgs   Ti\
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A1B021  S ac  4415  N208EB    9500                               68 22797    0

He's not ADS-B equipped. Tisk tisk.

Obligatory pretty picture:
http://www.flightradar24.com/N208EB/7526737
 
Do you feed your MLAT data to FR24 or Flightaware?


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dans2992 said:
Do you feed your MLAT data to FR24 or Flightaware?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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As Mike I stated, a little usb dongle you can use to get 1090 messages.

As to mlat, I know for sure my flight aware feed is using it, I believe fr24 is as well. I'm running both feeders.
 
kkoran said:
Why do you say it's a "fake registration"?
Click to expand...

Look up N779CB. It doesn't currently exist in the FAA database. That helicopter also broadcasts a bogus Mode S code.

N779CB doesn't trace back to a 3-letter shell company. It traces back to nothing.
 
DavidS said:
The Burke circler is at it again. Tail number N208EB. My 1099 decoder's been following him for a while.

Code: 
Hex     Mode  Sqwk  Flight   Alt    Spd  Hdg    Lat      Long   Sig  Msgs   Ti\
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A1B021  S ac  4415  N208EB    9500                               68 22797    0

He's not ADS-B equipped. Tisk tisk.

Obligatory pretty picture:
http://www.flightradar24.com/N208EB/7526737
Click to expand...

N632TK is up now. I guess they rotate through them.
 
Brad Z said:
N632TK is up now. I guess they rotate through them.
Click to expand...

Code: 
Hex     Mode  Sqwk  Flight   Alt    Spd  Hdg    Lat      Long   Sig  Msgs   Ti|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A846DD  S ac  4415  N632TK    5300                               98 36116    0

Ah, yes. And they're lower tonight. ... more annoying.

They do seem to like their transponder codes. I wonder if they use VFR (or turn the thing off) when they're not in the cone of death.

Fairfax County is in the process of amending their noise ordinances. They explicitly exclude aircraft. ;-) <snark>Which is a somewhat of a shame, because whatever joker keeps flying FFX1, the turbine-powered heli, over the house at 1k AGL in the middle of the night needs to cut that out. At least the helipad is not near a residential area.
 
I used to live not too far from the Fair Oaks police/dump/fire academy. FFX1 was a common overflight.
 
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