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Why is that plane circling?
09/08/2009 10:37 PM by John M
Anybody got a line on why there’s been a plane up doing laps around the neighborhood for the last hour or so?
TAGGED: question
Yes, John… it’s a police plane. I believe they always have red and blue lights at opposite ends on the wings. I saw blue lights on my way home at about Pahup and Rogers St. I don’t know what it was.
Phaup and Rogers. Darn typos.
Yes…Only police aircraft are permitted to fly at that low altitude over residential areas.
Its the UN. Put on your aluminum foil hat and they cant read your mind
Ah, it may be the cops. But I suspect that the flight instructors from Chesterfield airport sometimes get their instrument students to practice timed turns, holding patterns and slow flight over the city. They often seem to center on the monument at Libby Hill Park. Just for kicks, see if they are taking 2 minutes to do a complete turn. If so, they are doing or practicing “standard rate” turns. Poster #3 is incorrect, as aircraft may basically be legally flown as low as 1000 feet (which is not very high) over “congested areas” per FAR 91.119
On the other hand, the restricted airspace for Richmond International extends pretty far out… I doubt that student pilots practice over Church Hill very often.
I’m pretty sure the circler is a police plane. I see the thing so often that it’s weird to NOT see it. Sometimes it shines a spotlight down to boot.
However, the red and blue lights don’t tell us much as they are standard equipment on basically all aircraft.
Hmmmm…let’s see…the class C airspace around RIC extends to the surface only as far west as approximately N. 25th St. So from about N. 25th to Libbie you’d be legal flying below 1400′. But since you’d need to stay 1000 feet above the ground, and we are already a couple hundred feet above mean sea level in Richmond, you’d have to keep it between 1400′ MSL and 1200′ MSL – kind of a narrow range. So #6 makes a good point. Must be the State police….
The airspace around RIC isn’t “restricted”- you just have to be talking with a controller to go there, and they’ll let you do most anything you want as long as it doesn’t get in the way of traffic.
Most any practice work would be conducted at higher altitudes at night- and farther away from the class C airspace around the airport.
Whoever was flying around was paying attention to something on the ground. I could be wrong, but I don’t thing Richmond police have any aircraft. The state does. It may have been them.
RIC police do have aircraft. Cessna 172 I think is what they have. They have good IR optics and a flood light. They usually patrol / loiter around the city at night helping spot things.
If they were loitering, chances are they were helping a ground team search for something.
Or it could be aliens, coming to suck our brains out. Of course, it many cases, it would be redundant.
They were circling again last night and kept me awake. They finish their loop right above my house on Glenwood. I’m surprised more people aren’t saying anything about it. I contacted the FAA and called non-emergency, but nothing they can do. I just don’t see why they need to focus on our area, particularly since it is primarily residential. If they want to focus on the Shockoe area, they don’t need to be all the way over here.
Oddly, a small plane was just circling over the river downtown. When I first saw it, it was circling over the river behind the Fed. Reserve building, roughly over Brown’s Island, then switched to an area just east of there around Riverfront Plaza, flying really low, big lazy circles. Dunno when this post will make it from ‘moderation’ to real time, but when I saw the plane it was just before 10 a.m.
This just happened at my house, A small single engine aircraft at 500 ft was doing laps above my house, it stayed there for about 30 mins. The police had no idea what was happening. What I found odd was the constant engine pitch change(reving the engine) Im not near any interstates, not near the airport, and ive never seen an aircraft near my house in 5 years.
It’s 1:55am, and I am up thanks to this small plane with three flashing lights circling above my house. I live in the Westover area and it’s been like this for a few nights now. I really want to know what is going on. WHY would a plane be circling at 2 in the morning? Hmm.
Yea.. ditto to the above comment. I’m in Westover hills area as well.. and its about a month later; but on friday Dec 5th same thing, low plane circling for bout 20min.. idling up and down right by the river. I was wondering.. were they maybe taking a night skyline shot? or is that ridiculous, as it seems a helicopter would be the best bet for that..?? Can only guess it was state police for some reason.. anyone have anything to add to the mystery..? Just odd and slightly annoying..
I bet if you shine a laser at it from your backyard, someone would come over and explain why it’s flying overhead 😉 It was flying around Fulton a couple months ago in the wee hours. Woke me up and kept me up for awhile. Cops? Al Quaeda? Skynet!
Don’t you find that strange that the police doesn’t have an idea what is going on when it is restricted air space? I do know in years past it was said when these planes fly low circling it is usually looking for fugitives.
It has woken me from a dead sleep a few times recently. Surely they could do this some other time rather than the middle of the night! Unless it actually is police working on something (not training), 2:00 in the morning is not the right time.
This airplane its back. the last year has been horrible. I can not see the plane its self,but pitch change, circling and generally pissing me and others in the neighborhood has become a serious problem. started at 6 pm 12/12/14. I am going to list it every time they(who ever they are) do this.
I’m on the west end and I’ve got a single engine with no police lights doing laps for the last twenty minutes.
I’m sitting here now on the Southside of the city off of Jefferson Davis (should be well clear of the airport and whatever flight tests conducted there) and for the last hour or so I’ve been sitting in my car watching a plane roughly about 1000 ft up circle the neighborhood. It seems to come back around the loop it’s making in about 1-2min intervals. Small engine w/ red & blue flashing lights on opposite ends. It doesn’t seem to be searching for anything as the spot light isn’t lit so I’m kinda wondering what’s up… Read some of the earlier posts and this seems to be an identical case the date is 5/19/2015 and it’s now 1:20AM. The police probably are doing some kind of training and if that was the case of course they’d tell the public they don’t know what it is. Funny thing though I searched “plane circling above” in my phone browser and this was the 1st link that popped up. Somebody knows something!
ITS THE FEDS, SHEEPLE http://libertyunyielding.com/2015/05/30/low-flying-federal-surveillance-planes-popping-up-over-more-cities/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/02/fbi-flying-surveillance-aircraft-over-us-cities-planes-traced-to-fake-companies/
http://www.richmond.com/latest-news/ap/article_0401386c-7849-59b5-9d2e-df5056ea6e04.html
There is a plane circling jackson ward right now with its spot light on as well. Just doing small circles and slowing making them bigger. No idea what he’s looking for but he keeps the spot light on in the same general area. Doing this for at least the past 20 minutes. Interesting how this keeps happening
There was some NPR reporting on this a year or so ago–it is a program many cities use. The idea is the prop plane circles the city doing very generic surveillance – looking for things out of the ordinary such as speeding cars, large groups of people or cars, things out of place, etc.
when they spot something odd they increase patrol presence in that area to hopefully prevent crime, or at least speed up response to incidents.
Yes it’s the feds and over here off Midlothian turnpike they do those circles like everyday they are messing with people they consider a political threat I believe