What's this aircraft? Flying circles west of Melbourne.

a month ago by rcbrk to c/aviation

Light single-prop passenger aircraft with some kind of pod on the belly and maybe some instrumentation on the wings.

It did not appear on the ADSB plotting sites.

another photo of the aircraft

Copterdoc 5 points a month ago

It's a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan. The pod on the bottom is for luggage I believe. There are pitot/static tubes on each wing to measure airspeed and trim and a weather radar bulb on the right wing, just inboard of the pitot/static tube.

Pilots do circles for many reasons, usually related to training reps. There may be a radio beacon the pilot must fly past in a certain path for instrument qualification and so they are practicing.

Another reason to fly circles around an airfield may be to practice takeoff and landing. When they do this, they call it flying traffic circles, because they have to pay attention to traffic and communicate their intentions to other flyers and the tower.

path: 0 25961453, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
Duchess 1 point a month ago path: 0 25960864, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 5
infeeeee 4 points a month ago

You just shared your personal tracking code and doxxed yourself to google. Everything from the ?is= part is not needed. The link works this way: https://youtu.be/gnMUvrspd7I

path: 0 25960864 25962442, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 4
Duchess 1 point a month ago

Thanks for looking out :)

path: 0 25960864 25962442 25962477, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 3
infeeeee 3 points a month ago

It's still there

path: 0 25960864 25962442 25962477 25962504, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 2
Duchess 1 point a month ago

Must be caching

path: 0 25960864 25962442 25962477 25962504 25963013, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1
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