Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By Dodo
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1869724
I was flying along happily today minding my own business (apart of course from keeping a perfect, heads up, lookout ;-)) when, in the region of Haywards Heath, SE2 alerted me to an aircraft following me closely enough to be disconcerting. I altered course slightly, and so did it, I climbed and descended, and so did it. It felt too close behind for me to want to turn the aircraft through 90 degrees or more to have a look.
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When I had a chance I had a closer look at the ipad display and realised that the call sign of the following a/c, "G-AVLO" was actually mine. I immediately assumed I had misconfigured the SE2 with the wrong callsign as I do use it in more that 1 aircraft, but a quick look showed the callsign was correct. Incidentally all the aircraft I fly have mode S transponders without ADSB out, so I transmit ADSB through the SE2
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Once I realised this, I relaxed a bit and ignored the chasing aircraft. I have never experienced being followed by my own a/c before.

Later on the ground I had a look at the SE2 configuration and discovered that the ownship filter was not selected on.

Now, either this has been off all the time I have owned the device, (and I have used it for several tens of flights), or it has somehow inadvertently been turned off by me, or by itself.


I don't really know why I'm posting this except to wonder if anyone else has experienced this or has any explanation as to why this happened for the first time today if the ownship filter has been off all the time or what could have been the reason for it turning itself off. I always use skydemon to change the Hexcode and callsign for the a/c I am flying, and as far as I know, you can't make that change on SD. Perhaps you can and I have missed it. I don't think it was to do with the position fof the device as it was in the same position on the canopy of this a/c that it usually is.

I did wonder if there could have been a trial re-broadcast of ADSB traffic in a particular area.

I am now also a bit puzzled that it was always about 0.2nm behind me, and not in my exact GPS position.

Just musing really. Anyone else had this?
gaznav liked this
#1869734
Top formation skills there !

I had a similar experience using my eyes while flying near a wall of clouds on my right and the sun on my left and I got scared by another traffic, it’s impressive how your shadow converges into your view and will do everything to hit you, I was thinking this the end, some distance from clouds will not hurt when it comes to avoiding my own shadow :lol:
Dodo liked this
#1869735
I had this when a club brought a SE2 for each aircraft and I was first to fly with one in one aircraft doing a SEP renewal test. No one had remembered this particular aircraft had ADSB out so hadn’t set the ignore stuff up. It also gave the following position. I’m guessing that could be because of some transmit receive display delay but I don’t know
Dodo, gaznav liked this
#1869756
JAFO wrote:I recall in the first Gulf War, an aircraft having a long dogfight with an aircraft they just could not shake off no matter what they did. Turned out that they had been trying to evade their own towed array decoy.

Or so the story goes.

Doesn't help you at all but you just reminded me of it.


Unlikely, the only towed radar decoys (TRD - commonly called the ‘turd’) in the days of the Gulf War were on very large aircraft like Nimrod. The Tornado F3 was the first combat aircraft to fly on Ops with such a device in the mid-90s over Bosnia. I flew quite a few missions with it sausage-side too over Bosnia and Iraq. The decoy itself is a travelling wave tube on a few hundred feet of cable. It emits jamming techniques and can provide returns that lure missiles to it, but a host aircraft would never be able to bring it’s own radar to bear, let alone ‘have a dogfight with it’.

It’s a great piece of kit that saved my bacon a couple of times against SAM systems. But I’m afraid that rumour you’ve heard is most definitely a ‘shaggy dog story’ :thumright:

https://www.flightglobal.com/raf-uses-r ... 50.article

https://www.leonardocompany.com/documen ... 8987424584

https://forums.eagle.ru/applications/co ... p?id=38746
Dodo, GAFlyer4Fun liked this
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By Rich V
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1869768
@Dodo that is really weird. I had exactly the same thing happen, today at 10:10 local, and in roughly the same area. I mentioned the occurrence to a fellow forumite at the Kittyhawk fly-in.

I use SkyDemon running on a Samsung tablet, and selected SkyEcho2 for GPS Nav source; other than a handheld iCom, I have no other electrics at all. At around 500ft on climb out departing from Goodwood on r/w 32R to head East, SD flashed across the screen a large alert to an aircraft in 6 o'clock with a 0.0 difference in height, 0.1 behind. For a few moments I was somewhat spooked that it was the aircraft that had been behind me at the hold point. And then I checked the screen again, and saw the red aircraft icon was labelled with my own a/c callsign .... The warnings and the representation of the 'threat' continued intermittently for about 5 minutes, and then stopped. The flight back from Kittyhawk had no such problem.

I've not had a chance this evening to do any diagnostics on tablet SD or SE2, but I shall see what happens next flight, hopefully on Sunday.

Rich
Dodo liked this
#1869801
gaznav wrote:Unlikely, the only towed radar decoys (TRD - commonly called the ‘turd’) in the days of the Gulf War were on very large aircraft like Nimrod.


Yes, large aircraft like the Nimrod which had ESM. Large aircraft like the Nimrod which I flew on at that time. Large aircraft like the Nimrod which were highly manoeuvrable. Large aircraft like the Nimrod on which this happened.

Sometimes when someone tells a story - shaggy dog or otherwise - it is something that we can learn something new from rather than assuming we know better.
Rjk983, kanga liked this
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By StratoTramp
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1869805
My instructor did, initially I thought it was because I was using Skydemon as well as him. Though I switched it off and it continued. I think he may have resolved it like you. But yes unexpected. :cyclopsani: Surprising at first but then thought unless this guy is in an invisible Hawk there is nobody flying in formation with us that close :lol:
By Rjk983
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1869825
Rich V wrote:
…At around 500ft on climb out departing from Goodwood on r/w 32R to head East, SD flashed across the screen a large alert to an aircraft in 6 o'clock with a 0.0 difference in height, 0.1 behind. For a few moments I was somewhat spooked that it was the aircraft that had been behind me at the hold point. And then I checked the screen again, and saw the red aircraft icon was labelled with my own a/c callsign ....

Rich


Please don’t take my post as a criticism, or a condemnation or otherwise of EC.

Should it not be a concern to all of us that we are becoming distracted to the point of being seemingly heads in during climb out?

I’ve never really worked out the distances involved but what would be the typical separation in the circuit, it has to be less than a mile?

I know this almost steps into the large debate on the thread about the two aircraft coming together on landing recently. But we should think long and hard about which airfields we would use EC in the circuit. And which ones we should maybe trust the systems that have been in place for many years and have had very few incidents of collision in the circuit compared to the far greater number of stall spin incidents. Could EC distraction become a contributory factor in a future accident - difficult to tell probably as the the only person who could tell us if they were distracted will most likely. It be in a position to do so.

And what is the point of EC if we don’t have a definite pre determined (and well practiced) immediate action when we receive a traffic alert suddenly at same level, close inboard? If it is a genuine alert then by the time you have registered it, thought about it, looked for it, thought some more then decided what to do you could be in a sticky situation.
StratoTramp liked this
#1869832
JAFO wrote:
gaznav wrote:Unlikely, the only towed radar decoys (TRD - commonly called the ‘turd’) in the days of the Gulf War were on very large aircraft like Nimrod.


Yes, large aircraft like the Nimrod which had ESM. Large aircraft like the Nimrod which I flew on at that time. Large aircraft like the Nimrod which were highly manoeuvrable. Large aircraft like the Nimrod on which this happened.

Sometimes when someone tells a story - shaggy dog or otherwise - it is something that we can learn something new from rather than assuming we know better.


LOL - even an F3 could beat a Nimrod when it came to manoeuvrability in a fight. Sorry, but when you said “an aircraft having a long dogfight with an aircraft they just could not shake off no matter what they did” it gave the impression of something highly manoeuvrable (which a Nimrod wasn’t).

So this was the Nimrod’s Searchwater detecting it’s own TRD behind itself but it’s hardly a dogfight* though, is it? I’m not surprised the Searchwater picked up the small TRD either, seeing as it was designed to detect small periscopes of similar size poking up above the water. I’m just surprised the ‘Dry Man’ didn’t work out what it was straight away? :thumright:

* = a fight between two or more fighter planes usually at close quarters
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dogfight