Today, I was outside and happened to notice the vapor trail of an aircraft as it flew west out over the coast and circle around and headed back east. It looks like the flight originated out of Lancaster, CA. I was able to find him on FlightRadar24 and was able track his flightpath which I found was totally bizarre. This guy was flying over the place, back and forth, always maintaining the altitude of 39,800 feet and sometimes reaching speeds over 600 mph. I can’t be sure if this guy is just out joyriding, testing, or what is going on. But, you can check the flight track in pink in the links below where he went. He is still flying around as I write. Any ideas what’s going on here?
Thanks for checking that out. Nice to know I’m not the only one that saw it. I saw the plane as it passed by however, it was hard to tell just how big it was at that altitude. The big question is, what the heck were they doing? When I checked a while ago, he was at 4,000 feet getting ready to land back in Lancaster/Palmdale. But here is another oddity for you, I saw another plane on radar labeled GLF3 (Gulfstream?) in the same area over the bay area and they were making some weird maneuvers too but, they went in another direction and I lost track of him so, I guess there were two of them.
AIRBORNE GLACIER AND LAND ICE SURFACE TOPOGRAPHY INTERFEROMETER
UNINHABITED AERIAL VEHICLE SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR
producing:
IMAGERY
TOPOGRAPHY
I would say the flight pattern is consistent with imaging/recording topography. Whether they really wanted to image the bay area, or were just testing the equipment or training, is impossible to say.
I think you’re right. Checking the past flights on flightaware, they did pretty much the same thing in other areas and the route they took in their flight plan was intentional. It sure was weird seeing them flying around like that. You really had to wonder just the heck was going on.