No Number Visible!
I recently visited Prestwick, to see a couple of Australian C-130’s and have a quick look at some other stuff that was in. There was a KC-135R sitting over on the North side, the only discernable marking was the US Flag on the tail. There was no serial number visible, this is in line with the new Air Mobility Command policy – but is not a great help to a plane spotter.
I had watched it on ADSB as it came over the western approaches, watched as it did a quick pirouette and then landed at Prestwick. It’s transponder code matched the known code for 62-3553, but from the mound there was nothing visible on the aircraft to confirm that. Today I loaded the pictures I had taken to have a look for the Data Block, it was not visible anywhere on the port side of the aircraft – even with the photographs zoomed in to 200%.
Plane spotters have known that the removal of the visible serial numbers was happening, however I for one was unaware that the data block would be removed or relocated to somewhere that it wasn’t visible.
So when the next one comes in, I’ll need to try and be there when it arrives and when it departs – just to try and find the data block. Without a visible serial, the plane spotter is effectively in the dark as to the true identity of the aircraft. The transponder can be set to transmit pretty much any code, which could equate to any aircraft – the loss of the ability to use the Mk I eyeball to confirm the ID is pretty catastrophic.
I have known that this would happen for 15 years, as back in 2009 Lockheed, Boeing and the USAF started the project for the use of RFID tracking of Aircraft and Parts. The original news article is here, there are quite a few others around one of the most informative is this one here.
So spotters will have to become a bit more creative about how they get the actual numbers, or they just have to trust that the Hex Code is correct – not that easy to do when you remember that in the past there have been USAF aircraft with a different serial on each side of the tail!
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