My house is getting buzzed by military aircraft. By buzzed, I mean very low flyovers. I don’t live near any military installations, the nearest airforce base is McChord AFB which is about an hour away by car. I live near no airports other than a local strip from tiny prop planes, and even that is about twenty minutes away.
Several years ago, we started getting flyovers. It started with cargo-sized jet planes flying over during the early afternoon. Soon, it grew to be a near-weekly occurance. I even saw what appeared to be a fighter flying at almost treetop level. It was LOW, I tells ya! We called the McChord and talked to some person about this, and lodged some sort of noise complaint. The flyovers stopped for about 3 months, then resumed. We complained again, and they ceased nearly completely, occuring maybe once every 6 months. Now, for the last two nights, at 9-9:30 PM we are being overflown by a new plane that I cannot identify. It’s dark outside so I can’t see the plane, and strangely enough the only lights on it seem to be teeny ones on the tail, that are not blinking btw. The engine also sounds much more high pitched than a cargo plane.
It sounds as though the plane is coming in low on low power, then pulling up and increasing the throttles. I would guess that some hot chick had been sunbathing nude, except its night time:) So, any idea WTF is going on? I live in the woods (it is sparsely populated, but filled as much as zoning will allow) near a small bay, if that makes any difference.
you mention you live in a sparesly populated area. perhaps they are using your neighborhood in order to bother the least number of people as possible when they do their training exercises/war games/horsing around/whatever.
your complaints are important (yeah, right), but if they do it anywhere else they will only get more.
Well, a couple days ago the Feds announced yet another “high alert”, so I’m guessing that the Powers That Be at McChord are working on something new, which necessitates bedtime flyovers. And if you call them and complain this time, I bet you get the “But if we stop our flyovers, the terrorists will have won!” speech.
In the area I live in we get the same thing. There ia a dam not to far away, they make dummy runs on it. Perhaps there is something relatively close to you they are doing the same thing to.
Check with the FAA. You could be on a Military Training Route (MTR). These are low-level, high-speed, routes where pilots can practice their low alitude flying.
Could be that training at McChord AFB has increased the number of low-level flights they fly near your home. According to this webpage, they’re getting used to some new airplanes, although I don’t know if these are the type you’ve been seeing.
The quote on the left side of the page:
-Col. Alan Mitchell
I think the low-level training might be what’s affecting you.
I used to live in northeast Baltimore, and the A-10s at Martin airport would often fly right over my apartment building. They often looked like they did practice runs attacking I-95. They did quite a bit of low level flying, and the really neat thing is they would take off and land four at a time. When they weren’t lining their guns up on I-95 traffic, they would do low level flying exercises all over the place. When I moved up into Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half drive away, they even overflew my new house on a couple of occasions.
The increase in power leads me to believe they are taking practice runs at some nearby target.
It doesn’t sound all that unusual to me. The military needs to practice somewhere, and with the nature of modern warfare being what it is, they have to practice hitting targets around civilian areas. You definately are not the only one who experiences things like this.