Circular Contrails over Dorset? [Likely military exercise]

Efftup

Efftup

Senior Member.
Sadly I was driving and didn't stop to take any photos but earlier today, (approx midday 27/5/15) I was driving down the A36 in the direction of Warminster and when I was at Standerwick, I saw a contrail that was definitely a complete circle. which I have never seen before. it looked like two loops and at one point I could see a plane much higher up that appeared to be turning in a circular radius but it must not have persisted cos I lost it shortly after ( I did have to pay attention to the road after all).

upon playing back FR24, I did find an RAF Hawk nmessing about a bit AND an RAF RJ100 QQ101 from RAF Upavon which appears to have made 2 full circles at least but the height seems VERY low for making a contrail (8,000 ft or less) particularly on a sunny day.

anybody got any answers?
 
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I saw these type of contrails a while ago, they looked like smoke rings - north of Cambridgeshire

pretty sure it was Military Jets too (Mildenhall, Lakenheath Wittering etc)
 
Military makes the most sense. There were definitely 2 military aircraft flying all over the shop centred roughly over Shaftesbury, which COULD be the area I was looking at, but the ones I saw on FR 24 didn't seem high enough to make trails
 
There is a Tornado showing up on Planefinder, which appears and disappears but looks to be nearer contrail height:

upload_2015-5-27_18-3-9.png




This is the plane:

d52413a1f3c16d4bc997335f3ceb2cfe.jpg
 
wouldn't be anything to with would it?
http://www.netheravon.com/wswc2015/
External Quote:

Welcome to the 1st FAI World Cup of Wingsuit Performance Flying 2015

The World Cup will be hosted by the Army Parachute Association at Netheravon Airfield, Wiltshire, UK and will take place between Monday 25th and Friday 29th May.
 
looks like it MIGHT have been in roughly the right direction considering the road before the bend, but I am not sure even they would be flying high enough. The distance event seems to have them dropping from around 3500m which is only roughly 11,500 feet.
 
Efftup said:
Sadly I was driving and didn't stop to take any photos but earlier today, (approx midday 27/5/15) I was driving down the A36 in the direction of Warminster and when I was at Standerwick, I saw a contrail that was definitely a complete circle. which I have never seen before. it looked like two loops and at one point I could see a plane much higher up that appeared to be turning in a circular radius but it must not have persisted cos I lost it shortly after ( I did have to pay attention to the road after all).

upon playing back FR24, I did find an RAF Hawk nmessing about a bit AND an RAF RJ100 QQ101 from RAF Upavon which appears to have made 2 full circles at least but the height seems VERY low for making a contrail (8,000 ft or less) particularly on a sunny day.

anybody got any answers?
Click to expand...

Efftup, did they look like this? This is from Global Skywatch.
doubletrail.jpg

External Quote:
One small Jet circling for over an hour creating concentric rings over our area . Within minutes Frequency waves appeared . The Dark shadow line as the jet sliced through the material it had emitted was crazy to it see happening above me and my neighbours heads . Wiltshire UK 27/05/2015 .
https://www.facebook.com/groups/globalskywatch/permalink/10155613811325302/
 
M Bornong said:
Efftup, did they look like this? This is from Global Skywatch.
View attachment 13114
External Quote:
One small Jet circling for over an hour creating concentric rings over our area . Within minutes Frequency waves appeared . The Dark shadow line as the jet sliced through the material it had emitted was crazy to it see happening above me and my neighbours heads . Wiltshire UK 27/05/2015 .
https://www.facebook.com/groups/globalskywatch/permalink/10155613811325302/
Click to expand...

Yep that's the ones.
 
From the photographer of the above, Jackie Smith:
https://www.facebook.com/events/776523132414122/permalink/859330177466750/
External Quote:
I had been watching overhead (working at the airfield at the competition control area) all day for the wingsuiters and remarked about a coiled vapour trail. We didn't see any aircraft flying overhead Netheravon (this was directly above us) and the coil went bigger than my picture. definitely nothing else in our airspace .

And I would say it was approximately 2(ish)
Jackie also posted a close-up
11114747_10152933404358785_851022112337970515_o.jpg
 
Mick West said:
From the photographer of the above, Jackie Smith:
https://www.facebook.com/events/776523132414122/permalink/859330177466750/
External Quote:
I had been watching overhead (working at the airfield at the competition control area) all day for the wingsuiters and remarked about a coiled vapour trail. We didn't see any aircraft flying overhead Netheravon (this was directly above us) and the coil went bigger than my picture. definitely nothing else in our airspace .

And I would say it was approximately 2(ish)
Jackie also posted a close-up
11114747_10152933404358785_851022112337970515_o.jpg
Click to expand...
So is she saying the trail wasn't from the wingsuit event itself?
 
possibly, but at the same time, she is saying it's directly overhead when you can tell from the angle of the photo that it isn't., although that's how she perceived it. And the planes from the wingsuit event might not let the flyers off directly over the field if they are trying to get back to the field.

We don't have much information at all really. Intuitively, (which is ALWAYS prone to being dangerously wrong) it would make sense for it to be from this event due to the way they have to let lots of wingsuiters off in close proximity, but do they do it at contrail height. What was the weather like in that area yesterday?

We also know at least 3 military aircraft were in that general area too, and although they seemed to be flying too low to make the trails, maybe another was higher up.
 
Efftup said:
possibly, but at the same time, she is saying it's directly overhead when you can tell from the angle of the photo that it isn't., although that's how she perceived it. And the planes from the wingsuit event might not let the flyers off directly over the field if they are trying to get back to the field.

We don't have much information at all really. Intuitively, (which is ALWAYS prone to being dangerously wrong) it would make sense for it to be fro this event due to the way they have to let lots of wingsuiters off in close proximity, but do they do it at contrail height. What was the weather like in that area yesterday?

We also know at least 3 military aircraft were in that general area too, and although they seemed to be flying too low to make the trails, maybe another was higher up.
Click to expand...

Weather yesterday

EURO_RH_300mb_000.gif
 
Mick West said:
This photo was actually taken from Netheravon by a spectator at the wingsuit event:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152931211713785&set=pcb.859330047466763&type=1&theater
11357268_10152931211713785_7605773392777855525_o.jpg
Click to expand...

Although there's no other reference point, I would say that photo was taken looking in a roughly southerly direction, as the shadowed (ie northerly) sides of the clouds are facing the photographer (and the sun itself appears to be not far off the top edge of the photo).That fits with the photo from Warminster which shows the circles to be slightly south of the projected line of the road, i.e. some way to the south of Netheravon, which is to the north of that line.
 
Well it seemed directly ahead of me when I was driving through Standerwick, and if you look at the map, the road is almost directly pointing South West maybe we can pinpoint it by triangulating.
 
Efftup said:
Well it seemed directly ahead of me when I was driving through Standerwick, and if you look at the map, the road is almost directly pointing South West maybe we can pinpoint it by triangulating.
Click to expand...
Well that settles it. Aliens circling over Stonehenge! (Lines for entertainment purposes only...)

henge.jpg
 
OT, but I remember when there was some rubbish about how at the 2012 Olympic games there as going to be a mock alien landing. Part of the reasoning had to do with roads called Leyton Rd and Leytonstone road, and tried to link it to leylines, despite the fact that the NAME Leylines wasn't coined until 1921
 
Efftup said:
OT, but I remember when there was some rubbish about how at the 2012 Olympic games there as going to be a mock alien landing. Part of the reasoning had to do with roads called Leyton Rd and Leytonstone road, and tried to link it to leylines, despite the fact that the NAME Leylines wasn't coined until 1921
Click to expand...

And their attachment to mystical lines of energy sometime after that... The original theory was that they were some sort of trade route...

Edit for spelling, though Limes of Energy would be a great name for @Whitebeard 's next band.
 
I think the last band name I came up with was Barnes Wallis Simpson. We were inventing fictional backstory for another dodgy duo called Gorg & Zola. Barnes Wallis SImpson came after the Barnes Noyce Simpson experience, and Warpspasm developed from Occam's Razor who in turn developed from Botulism.


ANy more news on whether this WAS the Netheravon wingsuit plane making the COntrail Henge?
 
Efftup said:
ANy more news on whether this WAS the Netheravon wingsuit plane making the COntrail Henge?
Click to expand...

Jump planes fly far too low to make contrails, normally around 12,000 feet. No more that 14,000 without oxygen. THis is from Jackie:
External Quote:
Mick, I read your colleagues comments on the link you sent me and he is correct, the coil wasn't directly overhead but the trail from it was (obscured by clouds). He also said it must have been from the jump aircraft... I am a skydiver with thousands of jumps and it certainly wasn't the jump aircraft that caused it - there was only one Cessna Caravan in the air at the time and only just taken off. I spotted a Tornado (I also worked at Boscombe Down on that platform so I know a Tornado when I see one) a little later on doing a big circuit over Beacon Hill on his finals to landing. Huge military exercise on the Plain all around us with tanks then later in the afternoon, about 4(ish) the ASA big guns were firing in the Warminster direction.
So military seems very likely.
 
This is the track of the drop plane, far too low, and they just stay over Netheravon
20150528-064010-wja7r.jpg


Here's another interesting track, but again too low:
20150528-064150-lyaq0.jpg


There sure are a lot of planes flying around there:
20150528-065014-xreu7.jpg
 
and you didn't even catch the RJ100 which was ALSO too low while making pretty patterns in that general area. Big Exercise though, Jade Helm UK? :p
 
The closeup posted by Mick above looks to me looks like high altitude contrails, easily 28,000 ft or above. That would suggest fighter jets making turns up there.
 
Bill McDonald said:
The closeup posted by Mick above looks to me looks like high altitude contrails, easily 28,000 ft or above. That would suggest fighter jets making turns up there.
Click to expand...

Yes, a Tornado briefly showed up on Planefinder.net (stationary) but with no tracking info, so that possibly backs up what Jackie said in the quote above about seeing a Tornado.
 
so maybe it was the Tornado doing the maneuvers as there is no tracking data for that Tornado on planefinder OR FR24 that either of us can find
 
Yes, in the pic there are only fuel tanks and the ECM pod and Chaff/flare dispenser but there is no indication of what that particular tornado was carrying that day
 
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