contrail spotting in United Kingdom

[contrailwatcherUK]

hi all.

i wondered if anyone else does contrail spotting. i use a telescope to work out what aircraft/airline they are. i live under the ur37 flight path which goes from cork in ireland to southampton. recently i have seen US airways a330, atlas air cargo 747, and lufthansa a340/747/MD11/a330.
the thing is, i cant work out where these aircraft are going to/from. my guess would be to london or frankfurt from some american airports like kennedy or philadelphia.

[Jense]

Some days ago another big contrails-topic was made: https://www.aviation24.be/posts12835-highl ... rails.html

[Captain]

i live under the ur37 flight path which goes from cork in ireland to southampton.

How can we find out what flight path we live under or near? You mention ur37, is there some sort of map or chart with these flightpaths?

Many thanks.

Captain

[speedbird1]

I watch aircraft on airways too. It's part of being a spotter! If it flies, it's of interest!

Emirates

[contrailwatcherUK]

Dear Captain,

I look on microsoft flight simulator 2004. when you are flying press the alt key to get the tool bar, then go to world, then select map. the map shows the flight paths with the waypoints. if they are not there try clicking some of the red/green icons at the top of the map.

[ehamspotter]

Hello;


If the weather is good, i'm doing also on contrail spotting.

I really like it because sometimes you don't see directly the airline.




rgds:Jeroen

[Comet]

Contrails are all we get round here. I think that sometimes planes from Europe flying to the US go over our region and also some Irish traffic.

It is almost impossible to ID them - the only definites I have are a KLM 747 flying away from the Continent and an EI unknown flying to the Continent. That is only because those airlines have liveries which are not the usual nearly-all-white you get on most carriers now. The KLM blue and the EI green are easiest to spot.

[freddielaker2]

Can I suggest if you can, treat yourself to an SBS1 unit by Kinetic and a version of Airnav Acars? together you will not miss an ident on anything that flies over you - or rather it would be unusual not to find out what the ident of a plane would be. I have always wanted to do contrail spotting as I can see flights on the various airways from Deans Cross, to the north, Pole hill in the middle and Wallasey to the south, and the stuff that goes over here is.. well.. Pretty much all Squeezyjet and Ryanair toss in some Flybe, and a sniffter of Flyglobespan and bobs your uncle.
I use both. the SBS unit isnt cheap, but the Airnav Acars gets info from the net. I cant remember how far south its monitored from but up here there is a feed from Scotland, and usually the acars reports cross over the SBS1. I got a camera this last weekend and a 300mm lens, It just about pulled in a 1/4 decent flyglobespan 757, but that was with resolution up to 10mp and the pix were rather large. Photoshop blew them up nice but not quite nice enough. But if you want to find out what they are I can suggest the above. Brilliant and necessary if you want that type of info.