BLACK01 / U2 question?

[GlynH]

Not sure if this is the correct forum to post this question but it seems more relevant here than in the BTF/Heads Up forums so I'll give it a shot.

I regularly listen in on the BUFF's and eyeball them when they fly outbound & RTB along the Daventry corridor near Banbury but although I sometimes hear the U2 on London Mil Central 252.875 I never actually see the U2 nor does it pop up on FR24 unlike the B-52's.

Does the U2 transit the Daventry Corridor and if so what would be the best way to track and/or eyeball it if at all?

Guessing as a reconnaissance 'spy' plane it might not lend itself to being tracked...

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[Seacat192]

Hi Glyn.

I can partially answer one of your questions.

The U-2 has plotted on Freedar/ADSB Exchange a handful of times, but this was an exception rather than a rule. Only happened for a few days.

[mushbuster]

Hi Glyn, the U-2s on recon missions tend to head north toward Birmingham then turn right headed roughly towards Lincoln, they are climbing along the way and typically hit >50,000 feet by the time they pass over the Lincoln area. The altitude restrictions for the military radar corridors don't work for them. Return is by the same route.
For the transit flights to the med they usually head SW then turn south east, the ones headed home to Beale track north over Worcestershire and the west coast of Scotland

[njjarvis]

Also you're correct, the U2s generally don't transmit mode-s ADSB so don't appear on any of the commercial tracking sites.
He's on Swanwick Central now southbound RTB

[page_verify]

Generally speaking - their full pressure suit viz means they like to be in radar controlled or at least monitored airspace when they're below FL600 which removes the need for traffic avoidance systems like ADSB - and when they're above FL600, well who do they need to avoid other than friends from Beale? And a U-2 burns more fuel/min when it's sat at idle on the ground than when it's at max power at max altitude so they like to get up high as soon as they can.

[zero_gravity]

U2s use mode A/C which cannot be tracked on the regular tracking sites.

However for the last two years we have tracked every flight in and out of UK airspace using the special feature in PlanePlotter
Look back through the Fairford board and you will see quite a few animations I have posted over the years showing its tracks.

Since the outset of the war in Ukraine I have put an embargo on U2 and all other Mode A/C tracking reports . Having said that we are still tracking Mode A/C , just not discussing mission movements or networking the flight details.

Since 2020 hundreds of U2 flights have been tracked plus many thousands of Mode A/C only military and "special" flights.
We usually get between two and three thousand fixes a day.

[big john]

From Years of listening: On departure from Fairford they cleared to climb fl190 and turn right towards Gloucester, when clear of any local traffic they normally take up a radar heading of 320 or 330. When approaching fl190 they are then cleared fl600. Once above any airways traffic they are then cleared direct to either ROPAL or GODOS (waypoints on the fir boundary) in the middle of the North Sea, other waypoints have been used depending on the mission but generally East or N,East. To see them look for a little black dot on the end of a thin Trail.
If you watch the airways traffic on ADSB-X and listen on 252.875 for the turn, you can work out a rough location by the position and height of the airways traffic. I don't think it has ever passed directly over the built up parts of Birmingham but either to the North or South depending on its rate of climb.
Homeward bound ones normally route Shawbury > Glasgow again depending on traffic, those inbound follow roughly the reverse of the homeward bounds. those going to Cyprus normally head west towards Yeovilton but are normally turned South towards the Isle of Wight passing it to the West once clear they then head towards Paris depending on French ATC those returning route XAMAB then VLN but again when approaching the Isle of Wight are given direct Fairford.
Regarding Mode-s they don't show in this country unless the forget to turn it off. Although I think all of the currently active U2's have shown on my sbs since 2007 even if only for a second or two.

[GlynH]

Thanks so much for the many replies! Some good info there.

Interestingly one of the sites I feed is ADSBExchange so maybe I should take more notice of my own tracking capabilities!

If the U2's head North towards Birmingham then that's too far West of Banbury to get an eyeball especially if they like to climb rapidly.

I do feed other sites such as RB24, FA & FR24 as I've been into Virtual Radar since 2008 and I'm always in the Top 10 UK RB24 stations, am currently MLAT'ted to 733 nearby stations on FA and have had over 1.5m hits, 623,914 positions on 2622 aircraft out to 237 miles on FR24 today alone all with 100% uptime. But no U2 unless I'm not looking hard enough in the right place!

I used to feed PF & was a registered PP user back in the day and had comms with both Mark/PinkFroot and Bev/PlanePlotter well over 10 years ago now.

I decided against feeding PF last year as they weren't very helpful when I contacted them and I did take a look at PP again recently but it seems to me that although they seem to be technically the best of the bunch the garish bright yellow, one page website certainly hasn't kept pace with the times.

I downloaded and installed PlanePlotter and the setup certainly wasn't straightforward to the point that I never, ever saw a map and even to this day there seems to be no iOS app for PP only Android.

Shortly afterwards something went wrong with PP on my PC and so I ended up having to uninstall it which was a pity as I was looking to contributing to their data.

Mode A/C does look interesting though...

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[MarkHazelton]

Hi, Glyn

I'm just north of Banbury and started tracking the U2 at the beginning of the first lockdown, in the hope of seeing it overheard. During that time, given the lack of commercial traffic, it occasionally turned early, heading north east. If the conditions were right, you could see it clearly (I've got a handful of photos of it, I believe it was at round 45-55,000ft by the time it passed us) ironically, if the sky was very clear, you could hear it clearly but couldn't see it. I have also on one or two occasions seen the U2 fly to the south of the corridor, which will almost certainly have been right over Banbury.

Regards,
Mark

[GlynH]

Hey Mark,

Being North of Banbury you should get even better views than me then!

Yeah I took some photos of the BUFF's from previous deployments going into and coming out of the Daventry Corridor @FL100 from my back garden and in fact from my time at RAF Upper Heyford have some close-up interior & exterior shots of visiting B-52D's from back in the day.

45-55,000 feet...pity I sold the 500mm f/4L

Regards,
-=Glyn=-