Prestwick Ramblings

When I was at Prestwick yesterday, sitting on the North side was a Lockheed Galaxy. It is strange, not so long ago a visiting C-5 was quite the thing. Now a Galaxy barely elicits a mention in most spotting forums, changing times or is spotting fundamentally changing. There will be the usual flurry of photographs on social media, followed by the usual flurry of oooh’s and aaaah’s.

A changing hobby

Is spotting undergoing a fundamental change, probably, there is now an immediacy that was never there before. With applications like “have I seen it”, you can filter ADSB to show just the frames or scrapes that you need. Although you do have to give them a copy of all your existing data, before it will work for you. But to me, there seems to be an element of cheating (it just feels like it) to this.

Seeing the phone screen of aircraft, you poke one with a stylus or a finger and the icon vanishes from the screen and the entry apears in your database. Pretty nifty huh? Pretty soulless if you ask me, I have considered moving my own application data into a commercial package but the task is pretty daunting.

But Data from the ADSB network, the FAA and any number of other places can be manipulated, or incorrectly entered. Having recently watched a purported Stinson flying at 45,000 ft and 450 Kts, I’m guessing that the Hex Code was wrong – unless there had been a recent upgrade to the Stinson. As to the data being manipulated, well there are the FAA’s LADD and PIA programmes – so not so much manipulated as hidden or obfuscated.

Back to Basics

Going back to basics sometimes seems a drastic solution, but if we rely on the technology we have to rely on the data. It is simple to identify an aircraft using the Mk I eyeball, a dot at 30,000 ft – you have to go with what the tech says. This as I’ve said for the most part is OK, but there will be errors and they will be hard to identify.

Sometimes I miss the old notebook and pen, funny that – because the old logbooks are still readable.

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