Antonov AN12B

Flew over a few minutes ago. My god it’s noisy. Heard it for several minutes after it passed, it probably woke up everybody on its route.
Flightradar24 says it started off the coast of Algeria and is heading towards the UK (near At Malo right now, but still at 26k feet).
Registration UR-CGW, flight MEM3005.

Edit: Looks like it is heading towards Cornwall?
Edit: Turning slightly mid channel, towards Exeter. I wonder if it’s headed towards Yeovil?
Edit: Descending towards south Wales. … Slowly. Towards Liverpool?
Edit: John, prepare to have your windows rattled. This thing is noisy.
Edit: Landed in John Lennon International just as astronomical twilight passes.

So a Russian, possibly military, plane flying from unknown to unknown actually flies from the coast of Algeria to Liverpool? The mind boggles.
Whatever, I can finish my tea and go back to sleep. ;-)

Edit: John, prepare to have your windows rattled. This thing is noisy.
Edit: Landed in John Lennon International just as astronomical twilight passes.

Didn’t hear a thing!

Disappointed, though, that it wasn’t a fleeing Trump.

Disappointed, though, that it wasn’t a fleeing Trump.

1. Wrong direction
2. Life expectancy of a Trump¹ in Scouseland? :)

¹ There appears to be one (niece, I think) that actually has a standing higher than pond-scum. Apologies to pond-scum.

I was in the garden a couple of weeks ago and heard the unmistakeable thundering drone of the 4 contras of an An-22, couldn’t see it due to low cloud. Plane Find showed it was at 30,00ft 15 miles away, but felt like it was burst through the clouds on top me at any second…

Still not as loud as 14 B-52s from RAF Fairford joining formation for a sortie out to the Gulf back in ’03.

This time the noise was an RAF hercules at 28000 ft.

We regularly get a pair Chinnocks following the M3 at 2000ft, which is pretty loud.

In cornwall last summer I saw this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A400M_Atlas
quite often either approaching or taking off from Newquay. Pretty loud, and definitely a contender for largest number of propellor blades on one aircraft!

We regularly get a pair Chinnocks following the M3 at 2000ft, which is pretty loud.

I often get Chinooks passing directly over my humble abode. They’re loud, but not that loud (I’d much rather hear a Chinook at 2000 feet than a C-5 Galaxy…)

Being fixed wing, they know how to navigate, and get on to where they are going. Chopper pilots on the other hand, often descend and hover to read the road signs.

Still not as loud as 14 B-52s from RAF Fairford joining formation for a sortie out to the Gulf back in ’03.

There is no such traffic where I live but when I was 17, they were still doing an annual show nearby in Chièvres. I got to see all kinds of jets from the Belgian, French and American forces, including a B52 but what really left a lasting impression is an SR-71 Blackird: when it started to accelerate on its last pass with its gigantic blue flames coming out of its reactors you could feel the air literally vibrate around you.

with its gigantic blue flames coming out of its reactors you could feel the air literally vibrate around you.

Many many years ago, when I was young and obnoxious ¹, we were travelling on a slip road just beyond the perimeter of Heathrow. I think it was carefully planned as we just happened to pass the part that would have been in line with the end of the runway as Concorde just happened to be taking off.
Holy hell.

Airbus_A400M_Atlas

Seen them fly over from time to time, though it’s normally a twin-prop jobbie. That and a lot of Rafales.
There’s a flyboy training school out west in a place I’m not even going to attempt to pronounce, never mind spell. All the Tom Cruise wannabes hang out there. And they use the Brittany countryside as their playground for training purposes as it isn’t densely populated.

I’ve waved a large French flag to the big plane, and had it dip its wing in reply. Easy to see and be seen given that the big one flies NOE to slip in under radar, so only barely avoids clipping the trees.
I’ve also watched dogfight training literally directly overhead (you know your number is up when the chasing pilot goes high and then barrels 180 to shoot down on you).
Mom has also made coffee for army grunts given the task of going from here to there in a straight line without being seen. Unluckily for them, their straight line was right through the pond, which mom found amusing (the pond is a mess of weeds surrounded on one side by thick brambles, and yes, they did, to both). She gave them coffee for their efforts and promised to pretend she hadn’t seen them.
Me? At work. Damn.

¹ Now? I’m no longer young…

Concorde just happened to be taking off.

That happened to me whilst on the shuttle bus from Gatwick to Heathrow, passing the end of the runway at night. Tremendous noise made me look left over the perimeter fence, just in time to see what appeared to be 4 bright blue gas rings, in two spaced-out pairs, light up and just WARP away down the concrete. For a moment I thought the bus would take off too. It was the kind of sound that makes rivets fall out. Ah well; ‘sic transit gloria mundi’!

I stood outside the DF building near the runway at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire in the early 80’s and watched a Vulcan take off from the far end of the runway. I could hear it when it throttled up to take off and by the time it passed over my end of the runway I could feel it all the way to my bones, just a few metres to one side and already a few hundred feet above me. What a noise, what a feeling! Same engines as the Concorde but without the afterburners.

We used to take our summer holidays near Newquay, in the small village of St Mawgan. The beach is close to the end of the runway of RAF St Mawgan, now Newquay Airport, and in those holidays we were treated to the glorious sound of Shackletons taking off with the jet-assist running. Some days were evidently pilot training, as they did repeated take-offs.

repeated take-offs

AKA “Circuits and Bumps”!

Circuits and Bumps

Bit more of a challenge in a Shackleton than a Cessna 152, I dare say!

Bit more of a challenge in a Shackleton than a Cessna 152, I dare say!

I imagine so. The jet assistance was to enable them to take off with maximum fuel for their Atlantic patrols. I was told that they ran the piston engines on jet fuel to avoid holding two lots of fuel, and that this had a significant effect on the life of the piston engines.