Rumour: 2015 First Flight 21/05/15

[EGXWinfo Group]

Hey folks, some heads up, although still classified as a Unconfirmed, Unofficial Rumour with me the evidence is fairly strong that XH558 will be conducting her first flight of the season around mid-day. First came to light about it being booked into Scampton, times connected with this were 1245, 1200-1400. Local or UTC I do not know. There may be other local fields also being visited as well but the strongest info I can release is for Scampton. We are prepared for live tweeting on @EGXWinfo account for the Vulcan and I hope to have more for you all at some point.

[Richard B]

Many thank's for the tip of the day.

[storm1]

Thanks for the heads up, could you please keep us posted if you hear any more as I for one don't have Twitter, thanks in advance.

[Apollo]

Just tweeted.......Bright sunshine greets XH558. If all systems good, first flight of 2015 might be later today. RT / follow.

[POL]

You don't have to "have" Twitter to look at it, just bookmark this link: https://twitter.com/xh558

[EGXWinfo Group]

Unfortunately I won't be able to update here when we get movement I expect. My workload suddenly spikes when it starts moving and getting onto every forum/page/group etc just isn't possible. As EGVP states you don't have to be hon twitter to use it, use his link and substitute "xh558" for any user you want, remembering to remove the "@" from their username. Don't forget to make sure you reload latest tweets or refresh the page regularly to avoid staring at an old tweet all afternoon.

[mickfgr2]

558 just called for start up

[andygolfer]

twitter says airborne

[Steven]

Viewable on FR24 as G-VLCN. Plotting abeam Scunthorpe at the moment.

Steven.

[martmpf]

FL059, HD259, north east of Malton , Yorkshire.
Reg. G-VLCN on FR24

Edit: Just lost it on FR24, probably too low, 16.33L.

[martmpf]

Back on FR24. FL040. West of Hull. Track 144.

[martmpf]

Looks like Waddington.

[Mark Owen]

Talking to Waddington 121.300.

Regards.

Mark.

[EGXWinfo Group]

Apologies for not being more accurate with our information, there tends to be a lot we do not have permission to share. When it got to the day I had lots of people providing me with differing take off times and routes. At one point I had enough people getting in touch that I could say that I had a takeoff time given for each half hour from 1300-1600 so I hadn't got a clue when it would happen never mind the route it would take. Shortly after she departed Doncaster Scampton ATC closed meaning she couldn't use the Scampton ATZ, so unfortunately she never turned up there, which up until that point seemed to be the airfield with the most information for. Anyway I hope the heads up for the first flight still allowed most people to see her.

[Tally-ho]

I too followed this flight on FR. At times it (the blip) disappeared from the screen only to reappear some minutes later. At what altitude does FR lose the contact and why is that?

Thanks in advance.

[David Thompson]

Also flew through Elvington and Linton today and I understand that she is due back up again tomorrow with an ETD of 13:00 ?
Probably more info on the Vulcan website and Twitter feed regards that and probably worth a new thread too ?
With thanks to Daniel F. .

[EGXWinfo Group]

Tally-ho I will try and answer your question:

There are different types of transponders, we will ignore the basic Mode A/C here, mid range is a Mode-S transponder which transmits aircraft identity but not location. Then their is ADSB which transmits identity and location. Your commercial airliners use ADSB so in theory as long as one ground station is in range you know the location as it comes from the aircrafts GPS unit. The Vulcan and most british military aircraft only use Mode-S, because they don't transmit their location it has to be worked out using a network of ground stations, to do this successfully the aircraft must be in range of multiple ground stations at the same time.

Now because we are talking about radio signals they are effected by obstacles and weather etc. Then some areas have dense coverage of ground stations and some sparse. Therefore there is no specific altitude where they will drop off, it will depend on terrain, weather, etc etc.

That's the stripped down version anyway.
Hope that helps

[martmpf]

Well done EGXWinfo for even trying to explain it!

T-MLAT = Time? - Multilateration

I sometimes say it works like sat nav does but in reverse! It is fair to say that the ground stations that feed into the system generally belong to private enthusiasts unless provided (free) by an organisation like FR24.

Like sat nav, very accurate timing is required to calculate the aircraft position. The time signature on the individual feeds need to be the same. Most (I hope) use a system like the Meinberg atomic clock network to set their own computer time. Flightrader24 give a partial explanation: http://www.flightradar24.com/how-it-works or from Google I found: http://www.multilateration.com/surveill ... ation.html

PlanePlotter (PP) works the same way.

Without the feeds provided by users using their own computers and internet connections to provide the information, it could not work. Thanks to all of them!

Mart.

[Apollo]

She's going up again

[TankBuster]

Looks like she's heading home now...

http://www.flightradar24.com/VLCN/652ec80

TankBuster