It's already been an interesting morning. About an hour ago, a C-130 Hercules started buzzing our house. I'm used to low-flying aircraft from Camp Blanding, which is usually helicopters or the occasional Forestry Service fire spotting plane, but this was exceptional.
This isn't a small plane and its altitude showed on FlightAware as 400 feet, so it was insanely low for a plane of its size. And it kept circling around and coming back which was the weird thing. From the flight path, it looked like he literally took off at NAS-JAX on a mission to come annoy me, since he flew directly here, then started flying in circles. (Well, loops, anyway.)
Realistically, he was probably using a nearby stretch of Highway 315 as an east-west vector, and at his altitude, he was probably also looking at a neighbor's internet-radio tower about a mile away, as he's got this bigass American flag at the top. (why would you put that kind of wind load on your radio tower) and not, specifically, me.
I went outside to wait for him to go over because I just wanted to see, and it was impressive. I even had this primal, gut reaction of wanting to duck down, because I'm simply not used to seeing big planes that low. Anyway, I think he's done for now. I've heard the engines a few more times, but further away. We also couldn't find any more info on the flight other than a call sign.
Kind of making me wonder if we shouldn't put a red light on top of our tower. It's not required by law right now, but they are thinking about changing it to any tower over 100 feet.
This isn't a small plane and its altitude showed on FlightAware as 400 feet, so it was insanely low for a plane of its size. And it kept circling around and coming back which was the weird thing. From the flight path, it looked like he literally took off at NAS-JAX on a mission to come annoy me, since he flew directly here, then started flying in circles. (Well, loops, anyway.)
Realistically, he was probably using a nearby stretch of Highway 315 as an east-west vector, and at his altitude, he was probably also looking at a neighbor's internet-radio tower about a mile away, as he's got this bigass American flag at the top. (why would you put that kind of wind load on your radio tower) and not, specifically, me.
I went outside to wait for him to go over because I just wanted to see, and it was impressive. I even had this primal, gut reaction of wanting to duck down, because I'm simply not used to seeing big planes that low. Anyway, I think he's done for now. I've heard the engines a few more times, but further away. We also couldn't find any more info on the flight other than a call sign.
Kind of making me wonder if we shouldn't put a red light on top of our tower. It's not required by law right now, but they are thinking about changing it to any tower over 100 feet.