Tracking down a contrail with FlightRadar24

Here is a good flightradar24 video demonstration by Mick West of how to filter out aircraft that are too low to form aviaticus clouds. When forecasting aviaticus cloud events it is essential to know your local air traffic pattern to determine the time of day when these clouds could form, when the conditions are right, i.e. your area is covered by a boundary sheet.



Below is another interesting tutorial about estimating the distances of visible aerotrails up to 200 mikes away.

After learning the flight patterns in your area it becomes quite easy to estimate range without any devices or software.

Contrail, Aviaticus Cloud Viewing Forecast Periodically Updated

Central Wisconsin Flyway Forecast and Summary 5/5/2015

The Central Wisconsin Flyway is right on the edge of a boundary line (sheet) with heavy clouds to the South and dry clear skies to the North so we should see some aviaticus (contrail) formations today unless the dryer air pushes south over the Flyway.  The Rapid Update Cycle Map is showing conditions for contrail formations favorable to the south, but it appears the cloud cover is too heavy to matter.


Central Wisconsin Flyway Forecast and Summary 5/2/2015

I was out of town most of day so it was interesting to view another flight pattern  producing mostly non-persistent aviaticus and a few lasting segments in a double-layered clouded sky, cumulus and light upper scattered sheets.

Back home toward dusk only whiffs were being laid and in this short video they can not be seen:

At the time of the video dry air was passing over the Flyway from the west shown as the dark swath on the moisture map:

Conditions should be good for aviaticus formation all day tomorrow ahead of Sunday evening's predicted thunderstorms.


Central Wisconsin Flyway Summary and Forecast 5/1/2015:  Yesterday began with a full morning of no trails, not a whiff or a pencil.  Just a sun-filled sky dotted with the summer-like white cumulus.  Then about 1 PM CT with some moister upper air, short non-persistent spits were forming from the afternoon east bound.  The aviaticus trails grew longer as the afternoon progressed indicating a boundary sheet was entering our Flyway preceding a thicker cloud bank.  By dusk persistent aviaticus continued forming and in the far west horizon a layer of white clouds could be seen creeping in.  In the morning thin sheets of upper clouds were still present and the Flyway was still marked with lateral aviaticus clouds holding together for example 15 minutes before dissipating, and heavier, broken patches of high natural clouds followed.  The natural cloud bank may continue to thicken to where aviaticus will not be viewed this afternoon and it appears this bank will pass over and the trailing edge may be a boundary sheet where trails will form until dryer air follows this.

At 1:10 PM CT yesterday the airliners started to leave short trails, here is a video of 4 flights that passed overhead 37,000-40,000'. Video at 24X speed (Please excuse the poor quality of this clip, I'm just starting to work with a screen recorder):

By 6:30 PM CT Skies had many persistent segments in the boundary sheet as a cloud layer approaches:

http://theorioninitiative2.blogspot.com/2015/04/forecasting-day-long-aviaticus-cloud.html

Contrail Forecast for Central Wisconsin & Spotting Near Invisible High Altitude Aircraft

4/11/2015 7AM As a line and formation of commercial jets cross Lake Michigan tracking toward our general flyway in Central Wisconsin, I rush through my basic procedure of analysis to formulate today's aviaticus cloud forecast before these craft come into view.  If any contrails are viewable today, they only should be of short length and duration but overall we should see no aviaticus clouds this morning or this afternoon.

Update: 7:00-7:30AM All traffic along the west-East flyway displayed  short duration needle -like aviaticus clouds. All traffic was between 35-36000' with the exception of one flight at 26000 and climbing that displayed no trail.

                                                   How to Spot Aircraft that are not Sporting Contrails

First learn the flight patterns in your area.  To do this I ended up using Flightradar24 site.  This was recommended by Mick West and others from Metabunk.  I use it on laptop, desktop and iPad. 

With normal vision it is quite easy to spot aircraft above 30000' if they are trailing even a short whiff of white.  But at times aircraft will streak out a trail between 35-36000' and none at 34,000'. Or even depending on location some aircraft within the same elevation range will trail but others will not.

Years ago I learned some methods of improving vision as I used to wear glasses and wanted to explore the possibility of improving my vision after my optometrist emphatically told me 'there is nothing you can do.' (Other than wear glasses!) He was wrong.  One exercise I began was viewing 3 dimensional sterograms.  Most people are familiar with these. You lazily stare at a picture and suddenly objects appear in 3D that were not visible in the 2D format.

When we scan a completely blue sky we are only focusing right in front  of our face and not 7 miles away.  Changing focus to that range is difficult because there is no reference point so we do not perceive we are just scanning an area in front of our noses.  Hold up one finger at arms length in front of your face and focus on it and you see a single finger, now with the finger still in view look beyond it to the open sky, you will see two fingers though you are not focusing on them, you are looking beyond them, your individual eyes have actually separated (diverged)and you are focusing out and have a better change of spotting a trailess aircraft.

Binoculars work as well of course but you'll want to pre-focus on a distant object otherwise you may doing an out of focus scan just as with the naked eye.  This morning the moon was visible so I used that to set my focus.  Sill you should know the approximate location of aircraft and this is where I use the flight tracker. With an inexpensive app, high altitude aircraft can be approximately located by scanning the sky with the iPad camera.  I prefer the iPad because of the large screen.  Most aircraft are actually ahead of where they are plotted on the iPad screen simply because of information transmission delays.  So if you spot an aircraft on a flight tracker screen that is 20 miles away, start scanning the sky at it may already be passing by or down range.  I love practicing without binoculars when there is time.  Great exercise for the eyes.

The first arrival this morning while I was using the focus method, easy to spot though as it was trailing an aviaticus whiff:

http://theorioninitiative2.blogspot.com/2015/04/contrail-forecast-for-central-wisconsin.html