Sacramento sky trails morning Oct 7th [Normal Air Traffic]

[steve holmes]

Here are a slew of photos from this morning. I was working in the back yard and these 5 flights went almost directly over my house. Usually when I see such flights, they are headed NNW as some of these are and I can never find them on FR24. Of the 5 flights (which I am posting pictures of and also screenshots from FR24 at the time of each flight) there is never a match of a trail to a FR24 flight.

Yes, there were cirrus clouds above, which make trails last longer. But if you were making chemtrails, what better time to lay them out than a day where there are cirrus clouds and all trails last longer?

The cirrus clouds blew away and no trails of any type in the 90 minutes since that last one.

 

[Mick West]

Here are a slew of photos from this morning. I was working in the back yard and these 5 flights went almost directly over my house. Usually when I see such flights, they are headed NNW as some of these are and I can never find them on FR24. Of the 5 flights (which I am posting pictures of and also screenshots from FR24 at the time of each flight) there is never a match of a trail to a FR24 flight.

Yes, there were cirrus clouds above, which make trails last longer. But if you were making chemtrails, what better time to lay them out than a day where there are cirrus clouds and all trails last longer?

The cirrus clouds blew away and no trails of any type in the 90 minutes since that last one.

Your time for the first photo is 08:40? So 15:40 UTC?

Can you give your location a bit more precisely? Like nearest small town or major intersection?

[Edit: corrected time to 8:40]

 

[Mick West]

If it's 8:40, the only reasonable candidate is C25B, a private jet at 39,000

 

[Mick West]

My suspicion is that you are misinterpreting the heading of the jets due to perspective.

[Edit] and/or just missing the jets in FR24

 

[Mick West]

This trail at 0938

Matches this C680 perfectly.

On your screenshot it's this one:

 

[Mick West]

You would probably find it VERY useful here to filter out traffic below 20,000 feet, like:

In the 16:38 UTC replay it cuts the Sac clutter from:

To:

 

[Mick West]

Your 09:11 trail:

You say it's heading west, but it looks like it's heading east.

So that matches UAL6 perfectly:

The sun position is confirmed by your other photo that has the sun behind the tree and a foliage match.

 

[Trailspotter]

Your 09:11 trail:

You say it's heading west, but it looks like it's heading east.
View attachment 21881
The sun position is confirmed by your other photo that has the sun behind the tree and a foliage match.

The sun position is also confirmed by the contrail shadow (that can be seen left of the contrail in the above photo; click on it to enlarge).

 

[Mick West]

The 8:56 (15:56UTC) is

Is Alaska 569 at 36,000 feet

Or is it ASA527. FR24 is playing tricks on me:

[EDIT] It's 569, the 527 was a glitch from me having too many FR24 windows open.

 

[Mick West]

This process has revealed a few issues with FR24 (above). They filter the playback traffic based on zoom level, which seems to results in different planes being shown at different zooms. There also seems to be some problem with starting and stopping replays.

Like I started at 15:50, zoom level 8 (the last parameter in the URL) Play to 15:16, I get:

Restart at zoom level 9, from 15:50 to 15:56, zoom out to level 8:

We get more planes, but we are also missing planes. Confusing

 

[Mick West]

And that Alaska 527 actually went over Tahoe, nowhere near Sacramento. Buggy.

I suspect this is from having more than one window open on FR24 at the same time.

 

[Mick West]

@steve holmes, attached is the KML track for Alaska 569. Load it into Google Earth and move the viewpoint to your house. You should see something that matches the angle for your 8:56 image, like:

 

[steve holmes]

Your time for the first photo is 08:40? So 15:40 UTC?

Can you give your location a bit more precisely? Like nearest small town or major intersection?

[Edit: corrected time to 8:40]

I add 7 hours to my time to get FR24 time. The biggest city is Sacramento.

If it's 8:40, the only reasonable candidate is C25B, a private jet at 39,000
View attachment 21874

but that flight is going the wrong direction and never went over my house

 

[Mick West]

I add 7 hours to my time to get FR24 time. The biggest city is Sacramento.

but that flight is going the wrong direction and never went over my house

Perhaps though as you perviously confused east and west, you might have the direction slightly off?

And the flight is CLEARLY not going over your house. If it was it would be vertical. It's at a 45 degree angle.

I'm estimating you live near the 50/99 junction. Here's what that track looks like from there:

And here is your photo:

 

[steve holmes]

The sun position is also confirmed by the contrail shadow (that can be seen left of the contrail in the above photo; click on it to enlarge).

I don't care what your analysis says. I know which direction is which over my house.

 

[Mick West]

I don't care what your analysis says. I know which direction is which over my house.

If you face south then east is to your left and west it to your right.

The sun is always south of your house.

So if you take a photo with the sun in it, then the left of your photo is roughly east, and the right is roughly west.

 

[steve holmes]

According to the FR24 map (which I looked at because it's handy), that flight was NNW.

 

[steve holmes]

that particular photo was not right over my house but a little south of it. The most common "persistent" flights that I see over my house are headed NNW, which is how I labeled them. If I stand in the street in front of my house, I see those flights in the same exact location every time (just slightly to the west but close enough for me to say "over my house"), which adds to my belief that they're drones, flying programmed routes.

 

[Mick West]

According to the FR24 map (which I looked at because it's handy), that flight was NNW.

I'm talking about your very first photo.



Which matches this, which is NNE, not NNW.

 

[Mick West]

I've added compass stars to the images above. Maybe they will help clear things up.

 

[steve holmes]

I'm talking about your very first photo.

Which matches this, which is NNE, not NNW.

View attachment 21874

I'm talking about your very first photo.

Which matches this, which is NNE, not NNW.

View attachment 21874

usually when I'm looking at trails, I pull out my compass to get the direction right but as I said, I was working in my back yard. With that photo, I was facing SSE. It does not look like it's going the direction of that flight that I noted on FR24. It seems you have a hangup about that particular photo. What about all the others where there's NO flight in the vicinity as shown on FR24? If you're right, one out of five can be matched to a flight. That's a failing score.
I finally finished my backyard work to be able to take my usual bike ride at 6 pm and rode for almost an hour. When I got to a good vantage point to see a 360 degree view, there were no "persistent" trails, despite there being plenty of cirrus clouds that would make trails last longer and there ought to have been a few still in the sky because there's flights high enough to leave trails all the time. It's because of that that I figure those morning flights that I photo'd are not typical and are either unidentified drones or unidentified chemtrails.
Finally, I did see one trail in the sky east north east (which is the typical flight path of planes). Since that one was persistent (I call them "cloud-enhanced") to me it affirms that there ought to have been more in the sky if they were regular flights.

 

[Mick West]

What about all the others where there's NO flight in the vicinity as shown on FR24?

Read the rest of the posts. They were all identified. I was just starting with the first one.

 

[deirdre]

If you're right, one out of five can be matched to a flight. That's a failing score

what are you talking about, he matched all your photos.

 

[steve holmes]

I've added compass stars to the images above. Maybe they will help clear things up.

That flight that you say is my photo at 9:38 is over ten miles east of me while the flight I saw was to the west.

 

[steve holmes]

what are you talking about, he matched all your photos.

Just because somebody labels trails, that doesn't they're properly labeled, as I pointed out about the 9:38 one that I posted after you posted your statement.

 

[deirdre]

That flight that you say is my photo at 9:38 is over ten miles east of me while the flight I saw was to the west.

you're facing directly into the morning sun in that pic. which means you are facing East. (The sun sets in the west)

You're just a bit backwards because the flightradar24 is facing a different direction then your body was facing. Tkes me a while to wrap my head around orienting to the radar map vs real life too.

 

[steve holmes]

you're facing directly into the morning sun in that pic. which means you are facing East. (The sun sets in the west)

You're just a bit backwards because the flightradar24 is facing a different direction then your body was facing. Tkes me a while to wrap my head around orienting to the radar map vs real life too.
View attachment 21901

As I look at the picture again, I can see that the trail is slightly E of North. There's no way that that trail is over 10 miles away, as the flight you name shows.

 

[Spectrar Ghost]

The flight is at 40kft, which is 7.5 miles up. It looks to be at less than a 45 degree angle, which means it is at least that far away along the ground. 10+ miles seems perfectly reasonable.

 

[Mick West]

As I look at the picture again, I can see that the trail is slightly E of North. There's no way that that trail is over 10 miles away, as the flight you name shows.

It's a common problem when trying to find a plane in FR24. We forget that the plane is seven miles above us, so we think that since we are looking "up" then it's overhead. short of using a theodolite the quickest thing to do is simply point at the plane, and then look at the angle of your arm.

Here I'm pointing up at 10°, which gives contrails at around 40 miles away.

More details in this post:
http://contrailscience.com/how-far-away-is-that-contrail/

But as @Jay Reynolds discussed, the best way at getting a handle on this is to look for a plane based on FR24, rather than the other way around. I frequently watch the FR24 feed until I see a plane heading my way, then I go outside and look for it. Doing it from the same location gives you a good sense of when the planes will appear in the sky, and what path they will take. It's way easier when they have contrails.

 

[Mick West]

There's no way that that trail is over 10 miles away, as the flight you name shows.

I made a quick video showing what that trail looks like from the 59/99 intersection (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is within a mile or so of your viewpoint). It shows how the track, even though it's 8 miles away (perpendicular distance, 10 looking in the direction of the camera) matches the photo perfectly.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuWwyPdCk40


The red line over the track is set at 12,000m (39,000 feet), the C680 was at 40,000 feet

 

[Trailblazer]

As I look at the picture again, I can see that the trail is slightly E of North. There's no way that that trail is over 10 miles away, as the flight you name shows.

It can't be less than 10 miles away, otherwise it would appear high in the sky rather than fairly low down behind the trees.

I'm fairly sure that most of your trouble with identifying flights is that you're not looking far enough away.

Do you have a smartphone? If so I recommend getting the FR24 app. That lets you point directly at the planes and it will label them for you on the view in real time.



This example shows a flight 11 miles away horizontally from my location:



Seems comparable to your photo.

 

[Trailspotter]

The pictures of contrails 1 and 2 were taken in approximately the same direction with the foreground features overlapping (not precisely, as the camera position changed between the two photos):

Flight 1 went to the left and Flight 2 to the right, respectively. I have used @Mick West's identification of these flights, C25B, a private jet at 39 000 feet, and Alaska 569 at 36 000 feet, and drawn their partial tracks on Google Earth as in his post above (#30). Then I have looked at these tracks from the McKinley Park, where @steve holmes took the photos of contrail discussed in a separate thread:

The apparent angle between the tracks and their orientations match those in the composite photo, suggesting the park is probably close to the photo location.