Well, this is annoying

Jim_R

Jim_R

Pattern Altitude
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Feb 17, 2010
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Jim
Aircraft registered to Houston police. No idea what he's doing, but he's been orbiting near my house for the better part of an hour. I live adjacent to a Class D so I hear plenty of planes around my house, but they're all going somewhere--not just making laps every 90 seconds for 45 minutes and counting. At 11:00pm on a weeknight.

I'm pretty tolerant of--even excited about--aircraft traffic near my house. But not this guy! Grrr....

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N7050F/history/20230630/0243Z/KIWS
 
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Just shy of midnight, he finally departed the area and landed. Hope he's not just refueling and coming right back!
 
Jim_R said:
Aircraft registered to Houston police. No idea what he's doing, but he's been orbiting near my house for the better part of an hour. I live adjacent to a Class D so I hear plenty of planes around my house, but they're all going somewhere--not just making laps every 90 seconds for 45 minutes and counting. At 11:00pm on a weeknight.

I'm pretty tolerant--even excited about--aircraft traffic near my house. But not this guy! Grrr....

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N7050F/history/20230630/0243Z/KIWS
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We won't see you in the news tomorrow, right?
 
Chrisgoesflying said:
We won't see you in the news tomorrow, right?
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I hope not!!

The reason I went looking at Flight Aware was because I was surprised someone was flying donuts in this area, so close to the Class D. My first thought was "crazy person". I was somewhat happier to find the plane was registered to the police, but then that just meant there was likely a crazy person nearby on the ground instead of in the air...
 
To be fair, it could still be a crazy person in the air. Cop cars have been stolen and taken for joyrides, so why not a cop airplane?
 
Around here the police will utilize an air unit to support investigations or ongoing law enforcement incidents. Sometimes it's a shooting, subject at large, a barricadement, stand-off, etc. somebody was definitely having a bad day.
 
I had one (helo) hovering over my house one night late for 45 minutes a few years back. I called the non-emergency line. Turns out, the President was in town and getting ready to depart. I wasn't planning on flying, so I hadn't bothered to see the giant red ring of death.
 
guest user said:
To be fair, it could still be a crazy person in the air. Cop cars have been stolen and taken for joyrides, so why not a cop airplane?
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Fair. But apparently not. They did take off and do donuts again, but in another part of town. Those folks had to put up with it for ~2 hours in the middle of the night, so I retract (some of) my earlier griping! I can't imagine many folks would steal a plane just to go fly in circles for 2 hours.
upload_2023-6-30_8-21-18.png
 
I had a helicopter hovering near my house a number of years ago. Then he turned off ALL his lights (even nav).

I asked via Ham Radio for some frequencies, and started monitoring. It seems a State Trooper did a routine traffic stop on the interstate, and all 4 occupants jumped out and ran. They got two, but were looking for the other two.

So, while I would rather not be a reason for them to be hanging out in my neighborhood, there is probably a good reason, and I would rather have them doing so.
 
We had a very similar situation here a while back, with a helicopter orbiting lights-off within 1/4 mile of the end of our Airpark runway. It was a TX DPS helicopter looking for an armed guy. I think they orbit like that both to expand their view plus lessen the risk of getting shot by being a stable target.
 
Pinecone said:
I had a helicopter hovering near my house a number of years ago. Then he turned off ALL his lights (even nav).

I asked via Ham Radio for some frequencies, and started monitoring. It seems a State Trooper did a routine traffic stop on the interstate, and all 4 occupants jumped out and ran. They got two, but were looking for the other two.

So, while I would rather not be a reason for them to be hanging out in my neighborhood, there is probably a good reason, and I would rather have them doing so.
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Because turning off the lights puts the helicopter into stealth mode, thereby making it invisible.

The Marine C-130's out of Stewart have been blasting past my house each night. Low and fast. Everyone trying to get all their hours in before the end of the month?
 
That is insane that he made that many turns over your home that time of night. I can see how that was aggravating.
Do you have something growing in your basement?
 
Gary Ward said:
That is insane that he made that many turns over your home that time of night. I can see how that was aggravating.
Do you have something growing in your basement?
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No basements in Houston. He'd have to hide it in plain sight.
 
Looking at that flight path made me dizzy. They didn’t circle for three hours for two guys running from a traffic ticket.

They obviously were looking for martians or those inter dimensional beings who live, unseen, in Earth’s water.
 
Shepherd said:
Because turning off the lights puts the helicopter into stealth mode, thereby making it invisible.

The Marine C-130's out of Stewart have been blasting past my house each night. Low and fast. Everyone trying to get all their hours in before the end of the month?
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LOL! I was an enlisted crew member in a tactical airlift C130 sqdn years ago - we'd climb to pattern altitude on departure, head for a low-level route, and spend the next 2+ hours at 300' AGL as fast as we could go. There are a lot of people to disturb, even in a sparsely populated area, and they WERE heard from, especially on the nigh low-levels.
 
Yawn ... come to west El Paso ... CBP flies day and night non-stop ... not sure why, all the illegals get to cross over anyway before they head to where ya' all live:eek::confused:
 
Wow. That looks like 68 individual orbits, I think, if I counted correctly. I bet that pilot was a little bored, and hoping the ground guys would wrap up.
 
I was going to guess that his teenage kids are home alone and he wants to make sure they don't have a party again.
 
Sundancer said:
LOL! I was an enlisted crew member in a tactical airlift C130 sqdn years ago - we'd climb to pattern altitude on departure, head for a low-level route, and spend the next 2+ hours at 300' AGL as fast as we could go. There are a lot of people to disturb, even in a sparsely populated area, and they WERE heard from, especially on the nigh low-levels.
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Back when I was learning to play golf, we often played in the cheap evening hours at a course in NW Georgia. One of the C-130 training routes from Dobbins ARB went right overhead. They'd come buzzing over at 300 or 500', late in the twilight. It was great.
 
I flew C-130s out of Topeka, Kansas, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (late 1960s). Our low-level routes were 500 AGL for a couple of hours, then we'd pop up and drop our practice loads on the Jayhawk drop zone across the highway from our base.

About two years ago, I was driving near Tomah, Wisconsin and saw a 130 on one of those low-level routes. I posted "some things never change" that night, and a guy replied with a photo of the all-glass instrument panel in a modern C-130. He said, "Maybe on the outside."

My response: "What?! They took out the ash trays?"

(Yeah, the avatar photo is me in the left seat in Vietnam.)
 
Llewtrah381 said:
We had a very similar situation here a while back, with a helicopter orbiting lights-off within 1/4 mile of the end of our Airpark runway. It was a TX DPS helicopter looking for an armed guy. I think they orbit like that both to expand their view plus lessen the risk of getting shot by being a stable target.
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Easier to fly than to hover.

Actually, the one I saw was in a high hover. That is what caught my attention.
 
Officially we flew the A-10 at 250 KIAS at 500 AGL outside of low level routes. Officially.

On low level routes and checkout, we could go to 100 AGL.

But we only did low level during the day.
 
Gilbert Buettner said:
I flew C-130s out of Topeka, Kansas, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (late 1960s). Our low-level routes were 500 AGL for a couple of hours, then we'd pop up and drop our practice loads on the Jayhawk drop zone across the highway from our base.

About two years ago, I was driving near Tomah, Wisconsin and saw a 130 on one of those low-level routes. I posted "some things never change" that night, and a guy replied with a photo of the all-glass instrument panel in a modern C-130. He said, "Maybe on the outside."

My response: "What?! They took out the ash trays?"

(Yeah, the avatar photo is me in the left seat in Vietnam.)
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BY the 1980s they had us getting lower - no chaff, flares, or counter measures then.
 
kyleb said:
Back when I was learning to play golf, we often played in the cheap evening hours at a course in NW Georgia. One of the C-130 training routes from Dobbins ARB went right overhead. They'd come buzzing over at 300 or 500', late in the twilight. It was great.
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They still come up here on a regular basis. Both Dobbins (Cobb) and Hurlburt (King) use the “slow routes” and one of them goes right over our base. A C-130 (King44) flew right behind us as right after we departing last week.
 
Definitely chemtrails.
 
Randomskylane said:
I’m sure I should know what those lines are (vortices you can’t see with eye?)
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Well they’re vortices and you can definitely see them with the eye. Just have to have the right conditions.

 
Matthew said:
Contrails off the prop tips from the high relative humidity. Or chemtrails, I dunno.
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Chemtrails. Specifically Dihydrogen Monoxide caused by unnatural pressures from swinging treated iron much too fast. It's an affront to nature.

:p:D:p
 
Matthew said:
Contrails off the prop tips from the high relative humidity. Or chemtrails, I dunno.
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Contrails are hot, moist (one of the primary products of combustion is water vapor after all) exhaust gasses mixing with the cold ambient air and condensing into liquid water.

Wing tip vortices and prop/rotor vortices (fundamentally the same thing) can become visible in high humidity air due to their high velocities and associated low static temperatures dropping the temperature locally below the dew point and water vapor in the core condensing.
 
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