/n/ - Transportation » Thread #1600233

[27 / 5 / ?]

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Sat 23 Jan 2021 01:10:05 No.1600233 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>1600244 >>1601179 >>1601200

This doesn't fit in /o/ so excuse me if i throw it in transportation. Can any aviation fags tell me whether pic-related could appear as a briefly illuminated star in the night sky? like a random pulse every 30-45 seconds? I've examined hi-res photos of these things for a long time but am by no means an expert. I imagine they would have navigation lights that could be toggled on or off.

Not /x/ but I noticed this very bright light which pulsed occasionally last night over Sydney and am wondering if it could have been one of these.

https://www.defenseworld.net/news/25970/Australia_Purchases_MQ_9B_SkyGuardian_Drones

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Jan 2021 01:44:03 No.1600244 Report

Quoted By: >>1600247

>>1600233
Probably not. Nav lights don't have intervals that long.

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights?

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Sat 23 Jan 2021 01:50:12 No.1600247 Report

Quoted By:

>>1600244
well that's what i thought, but i was wondering if they may have had some frontal light, or the ability to install one and operate it intermittently for testing purposes. i.e. they may have been testing some kind of avionics sensor or something on the ground to see if it could detect it. or if anyone with expertise in this field might know.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Jan 2021 01:50:42 No.1600248 Report

Quoted By: >>1600249 >>1600262

probably spacex internet satellites

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights?

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Sat 23 Jan 2021 01:51:56 No.1600249 Report

Quoted By: >>1600256 >>1600262

>>1600248
i'm fairly certain it wasn't those. i've seen the satellite trains when they were particularly bright and actually saw one last night as well, it was very different.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Jan 2021 02:08:35 No.1600256 Report

Quoted By: >>1600262

>>1600249
doubt it would be a drone any where near Sydney
no military reason to fly around there and if it were just test flights, they probably wouldn't want to interfere with civilian air traffic.
I admit I don't know Aus but here we have CFB Cold Lake where the RCAF can do whatever they want while only bothering a few Inuit and some caribou. I'm sure the Aus Outback has something similar

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights?

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 1587491364217.png, 401KiB, 588x577

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Sat 23 Jan 2021 02:39:47 No.1600262 Report

Quoted By: >>1600372

>>1600249
>>1600248
imagine something that looks just like a planet in the night sky, say venus or jupiter, but even brighter for say, 1-1.5 seconds.
>>1600256
because of the lockdowns, air traffic is basically completely dead of an evening (it was around 2300 hrs AEDST). we also have an air traffic curfew on sydney international airport between 2300 and 0600 local.
most evenings the only thing we have in the sky are polair choppers, or the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan used by polair that runs flower rings with a stingray on board. i wouldn't rule out them using a predator for similar sigint. we don't have any constitutional protections from that kind of spying in Australia. however, i wouldn't imagine such electronics would be effective at the kind of altitude i perceived this thing to be at
pic-related from 29 Sep 2020

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Jan 2021 03:59:29 No.1600276 Report

Quoted By: >>1600277

>like a random pulse every 30-45 seconds?
Is it staying in place, or moving?

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights?

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Sat 23 Jan 2021 04:20:47 No.1600277 Report

Quoted By: >>1600297

>>1600276
>is it stationary or moving?
not geosynchronous.
the pulses of light appear in different locations in the sky, but generally throughout the south-east. It *appeared* to form a large circle if you plotted all of the flashes on a star map, which is why I consider it may have been a drone. As to whether it is moving when the pulse of light appears, the pulses were too short to determine if this was the case.

To complicate matters, I did observe a meandering "floater" with a thermal optic I have. Anons who have these kinds of devices will likely know what I am talking about. But I can't draw any conclusions as to what this was, or even if it was the same object.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Jan 2021 07:24:27 No.1600297 Report

Quoted By: >>1600318

>>1600277
>large circle
If it's a very large circle, it suggests a satellite or group of them. As for flashing, that could be the tumbling of debris that only catches the sun's light at certain angles. Some asteroids and other objects do similar, but on a slower timescale.
There's also enough space debris in the sky that I wouldn't be surprised if it was behind what you saw.
If it's a smaller circle, then I'm truly stumped.

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights?

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Sat 23 Jan 2021 09:13:52 No.1600318 Report

Quoted By:

>>1600297
it's nearly nightfall here. i will take a night photo in a few hours and mark the approximate sightings

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Jan 2021 09:27:49 No.1600322 Report

Quoted By: >>1600355

>Thinks drones are flying over Sydney for some fucking reason
Australian hours, everybody. You've either taken too much medication or not enough.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Jan 2021 11:10:34 No.1600334 Report

Quoted By: >>1600355

Comfy thread, OP. I look forward to tonight’s update. Please don’t get suicided.

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights?

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Sat 23 Jan 2021 12:56:24 No.1600355 Report

Quoted By: >>1600356 >>1600377

>>1600322
>Thinks drones are flying over Sydney for some fucking reason
I think, that's why I'm not a schizo, which is why I'm looking for a rational reason for what I cannot explain. If you read the thread, you would have noted that I have provided evidence above that Australia has actually purchased these drones, and I will now add further, that they have been musing about doing so since before November 2018:
https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2018/11/16/australia-makes-its-pick-for-drone-fleet/
We've also had considerable bumps to our defense budget in the last year and is projected to continue for the next few.
>>1600334
Thanks anon, i hope i'm not breaking board etiquette too much as i'm usually a /pollack/. I'm paranoid, and although slightly overweight, am reasonably fit. I love my life and have no heart problems.

General update:
2200 hrs, went outside for some 15 mins, night sky is very hazy. I can only assume because of temperature (24ºC) and humidity (75%) combined with waxing moon >50% full now.
No unusual activity detected apart from single satellite moving in ESE direction.
my phone takes beautiful night shots, but the FOV of the camera is too narrow to describe what i was seeing, so i'll draw it on a google skymap in next post.

General question:
is there a better way to track aircraft than FLIGHTRADAR24 (as i know not everything shows up on there). I have monitored the SkyKing threads but am unsure if that would work in Australia.

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights?

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 1581819641802.png, 1MiB, 2340x1080

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Sat 23 Jan 2021 13:01:45 No.1600356 Report

Quoted By: >>1600376 >>1600602

>>1600355
okay, so rough skymap from last night, Friday 22 January 2020 included.
numbers 1 though 4 indicate approximate positions of definite sightings of the beacon, in order.
i saw it while looking directly at it about 4 times, and caught it in peripheral vision another 4 times, which is not included on the map. for anyone not experienced with skymap, zooming out like this produces a fisheye style effect, so the map is greatly warped near the edges.

i went out between 2305 and 2345 hours Sydney local time but couldn't see anything like i described seeing last night.
I did spot 2 shooting stars (not big ones unfortunately).
full moon and bad light pollution make for terrible stargazing.
nothing interesting on thermal or my shitty gen1 nod tube
i will monitor the thread if anyone has any questions, and appreciate anons' interest.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Jan 2021 13:38:24 No.1600372 Report

Quoted By: >>1600374

>>1600262
do you have police helicopters?
the ones here turn their nav lights off sometimes when looking for people

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights?

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Sat 23 Jan 2021 13:45:49 No.1600374 Report

Quoted By:

>>1600372
Yes we do have police helicopters, i have put some images from one of their light planes, the local airwing is called PolAir. They do occasionally turn all of their lights off when they are sneaking up on someone, but generally always run with navigation lights. They are sometimes not visible on FlightRadar24, i don't know if this is because they turn off their transponders (i don't know if they are allowed to do this?) or if FlightRadar just sometimes decides not to show them (they do say they don't always show military / govt aircraft), and i know for a fact military blackhawk convoys don't show up on it which I frequently see in person.
On that note, I'm confident it wasn't a police helicopter, because:
1. there was no noise
2. they appear as solid black dots on my thermal optic, and this thing didn't.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Jan 2021 13:56:00 No.1600376 Report

Quoted By: >>1600562

>>1600356
this looks like satellites to me

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Jan 2021 14:14:56 No.1600377 Report

Quoted By: >>1601208 >>1601214

>>1600355
>i'm usually a /pollack/
into the trash it goes

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights?

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Sun 24 Jan 2021 01:30:34 No.1600562 Report

Quoted By:

>>1600376
while i don't rule out a reflection from a satellite (that i haven't seen one that bright), i can tell you, there was no satellite moving between those points
>t. been skywatching for 30 years

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Jan 2021 03:22:55 No.1600602 Report

Quoted By:

>>1600356
Jesus christ, you nerd. Get a job in air traffic control. And if you can pass basic training they'll let you fly the damn drone.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Jan 2021 17:00:20 No.1601179 Report

Quoted By:

>>1600233
Homosexual jews hate when I talk about it, but I see a lot of blinking stuff here on high altitude which moves very slowly from my PoV.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO Google_Loon.jpg, 620KiB, 1128x841

Anonymous Mon 25 Jan 2021 17:49:49 No.1601200 Report

Quoted By: >>1601228 >>1601917

>>1600233
most probably an aerial internet balloon like Project Loon. Loon was just shut down a few days ago but there could be other similar internet balloon companies, especially in AUS since I heard you guys have terribad internet around the countryside

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Jan 2021 18:15:38 No.1601208 Report

Quoted By: >>1601214

>>1600377
this
abandon thread

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Jan 2021 18:31:28 No.1601214 Report

Quoted By: >>1601917

>>1600377
>>1601208
Lets shit up a quality thread for no reason!

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Jan 2021 18:53:17 No.1601228 Report

Quoted By: >>1601917

>>1601200
I was thinking something like this too. Maybe a weather balloon with a strobe on it so it could be tracked visually?

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights?

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 1604995787024.jpg, 597KiB, 2880x2055

MQ9 Reaper or Predator drones, spotlights? Wed 27 Jan 2021 11:40:24 No.1601917 Report

Quoted By:

>>1601214
Well, that are bumping it (possibly)!
I still have the thread open, reason I have not posted is because of adverse weather, I'm a regular stargazer, so will report if I see it again anons.
i had somebody teach me about ADSB exchange so provided they don't turn the transponder off, if it happens again I should be able to see it.

>>1601200
terribad internet is an understatement.
we recently (2010 commence) underwent a huge "nationbuilding" endeavour to roll out high-speed internet to every premises in the country. recently they said fuckit.png and decided to upgrade the service maps to say 100% coverage*
*Satellite available in unwired areas.
Let me tell you, I have had satellite internet. and it is FREAKING HORRIBLE. latency is insane and the best speed we could get was 200 kb/s.
On topic: i will keep this in mind, but again i press X to doubt, simply because of the distance covered by this object in the relatively short timeframe doesn't seem correct for a balloon at that altitude.
>>1601228
i would expect the strobe to go off at a fixed interval, and at least be a lot more regular. keep in mind, the intervals were some 30-45 seconds apart. i did not time them so i can't be certain if it was precisely apart.

>insert reaper porn because this *is* an imageboard.

Capcode	All Only User Posts Only Verified Posts Only Moderator Posts Only Manager Posts Only Admin Posts Only Developer Posts Only Founder Posts
Show Posts	All Only With Images Only Without Images Only Spoiler Images Only Non-Spoiler Images
Deleted Posts	All Only Deleted Posts Only Non-Deleted Posts
Ghost Posts	All Only Ghost Posts Only Non-Ghost Posts
Post Type	All Only Sticky Threads Only Opening Posts Only Reply Posts
Results	All Grouped By Threads
Order	Latest Posts First Oldest Posts First

On these archives

Your latest searches