Be Excellent To Each Other

I was looking at that flight tracker website yesterday while the kids were at cricket practice and there was a Ryanair flight overhead that took off from Liverpool, flew in a circle over the Wirral and landed back at Liverpool.

Ah, the flight to Malia

I see that happening regularly at Manchester as well. I’m guessing they’re just maintenance flights to check their airworthiness.

It could well be that, however, I watched a video that suggested that if an airline doesn't use it's slots for a certain period of time then it will lose them, so it could also be that too (It's probably a bit of both)

I'm sure I've heard about that as well, but a lot of rules have gone out of the window because of the pandemic, e.g. I didn't get removed from my dentist's register after not having a check-up for nearly two years. I had one booked before lockdown began but that was cancelled when they closed.

ENEMY AC130 ABOVE

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-englan ... e-56847090

That Osprey somebody mentioned has smashed up Addenbrooke’s helipad.

A vintage jet did something similar at Halfpenny Green
https://youtu.be/gX3_mQZ4gY8

I can understand what is happening with the downdraught of that osprey thing, but I do t quite understand what’s happening with the jet. Is that due to the force coming out of those engines at the back? I thought that’d be more backwards than down.

Yep, it’s angled slightly down while the plane is flat on its wheels then as it rotates to take off it really does some damage.

Oh, that makes sense. It really seemed to damage the entire length of the runway!

I think this will illustrate the point quite nicely.

Haha, yes! I’m surprised it doesn’t just melt the tarmac right off!

A pair of ospreys flew over here earlier, propellers up despite moving forward at height. Bit weird, and noisy buggers because of it. Someone getting some training presumably.

I’d never heard of them before they were mentioned the other day. They’re such curious looking things.

I had a very confusing conversation a while back about "till-trotter" planes, with someone who meant Ospreys but had misread the word "tiltrotor".

We see military stuff quite a lot round here, North West of Worcester. Ospreys, Chinooks, fighters, atlases. Sometimes not just moving about but clearly on exercise - those ospreys today, fighters low and fast along the valley (and even more fun, right over the house!), The atlas did a super-slow run in the valley which was amazing last summer, or over the road in pairs very low with the back doors open.

Good to know there are trackers, now if only I can figure out history instead of live!

I’ve never seen/heard the word ‘tiltrotor’ before. Google image search shows that they’re really quite different in design from each other. They all look really strange though, and ungainly.

I’m in Bromsgrove and we mostly get the A400 and C130 at high level but occasionally I see some F15s heading towards Wales and the Mach Valley.

This P51 has gone over a few times too.

Ospreys look mad but in practice they've turned out to be a bit crap, lower load capacity than a Chinook, shorter range and speed when in vertical mode and have a habit of falling apart and crashing.

The American military paying billions on billions to replace perfectly functional designs with over-complicated, enormously expensive multi-purpose turds? Surely not!

Today's interesting flyover was an Apache gunship while I was out walking the dog. Sounds like it's on its way back right now actually.

The Red Arrows just flew overhead on the way to Ragley Hall

I'm in St Ives and saw these four fly over today. They had propellors on the tops of their wings which Google says could be the V22 Osprey? Anyway, enjoy the highly detailed picture.

They were indeed Ospreys, along with three KC130 tankers. Over here for the G7 summit.

Sunday afternoon Chinooks! While they were very nearby and I was struggling to get my camera out it was a bit like leaning against the speaker stacks in a club. Fair old pace on them today, the coffee must be fresh.

Apparently a pair of Apaches went over not long after but it was hedge trimming the lane and had headphones on so no photos of them.