Can any aviation buffs in California solve a mystery?
Lots of tracks of strange-looking flight paths around Lake Elsinore are being shared around as evidence of nefarious government spraying of chemtrails (:rolleyes:), and I’m trying to find out the real explanation.
The plane seems to circle around lots (I assume the straight-line segments are an artifact of the low resolution of the tracking) and stay at relatively low altitude. The identification MSN4 (I’ve also seen others such as MSN2) doesn’t seem to help as it doesn’t show on any airframe register.
(MSN2 and MSN4 are the codes for two Airbus A350 test aircraft, but I somehow doubt these are responsible!)
There is also a popular skydiving center at Lake Elsinore. They would have a lot of flights that stay fairly close to the airport while they climb to jump altitude.
Ah yes, the government is spraying chemicals, but allowing the release of the flightplan of those planes. Conspiracy theorists are so… special.
Anyway, to answer your actual question, is that the entire flight or just the end? This gif of the Atlanta airport shows that ATC will put flights into a holding pattern (which is just flying in circles) if they need the plane to wait to land.
Speed is consistent with a skydiving aeroplane. Could be anything though, training, joy flight, whatever. News flash to the conspiracy theorists, small aircraft often just go up to fuck about.
I looked up the MSN code in the ICAO callsign database, it belongs to some Mexican cargo outfit. However, Skydive Elsinore uses the callsign Moonshine for their airplanes. Seems that the Twin Otters are Moonshine 1 & 2, and the Caravans are Moonshine 3 & 4. The Moonshine callsign and it’s MSN code would be via a local Letter of Agreement with the SoCal Approach and Los Angeles Center ATC facilities.
My industry contacts tell me it’s a CIA front company that sprays mind control chemicals.
MSN stands for Manufacturer’s Serial Number. Every aircraft made anywhere in the western world has an MSN.
Airbus tends to use the MSN number as the public “name” for each aircraft in the test program. And so they call a particular test jet “A350 MSN001” or whatever. But they don’t actually use “MSN” as an aircraft call sign with ATC. Nor is that the aircraft registration number.
Probably my lack of knowledge showing up there. Some planes on Flightaware, FR24 etc show up the plane registration but not any filed flight number. I assumed the transponder identifies the plane by its tail number, but that might not be right. Does the transponder have a unique code that is then looked up by the radar sites to give the tail number?
That’s all wrong, but it IS a reasonable assumption.
Aircraft are identified to ATC for radio communication & flight plan purposes by three different bureaucratic systems. Airlines and some operators like the Elsinore skydivers use a company call sign assigned by the FAA/FCC plus a company-chosen flight number, e.g. “Northwest 123” or “CargoDog 456”. Straight civilian aircraft, including corporate bizjet type aircraft use the actual FAA aircraft registration number, e.g. “N1234B” for US registered, or something like “XA-BCD” for non-US registered aircraft. And the US military uses either the aircraft registration number OR a callsign & flight number depending on various details.
So now we know what the airplanes are called when flying.
(Warning to pilot nitpickers: Simplification ahead) IF the flight is operating on a flight plan, then it will be known to ATC. Airplanes can fly around much of the US airspace without a flight plan and talking to no one, completely unknown to ATC, even though ATC can perhaps see them via radar.
If operating on a flight plan, part of the negotiation process includes ATC assigning a transponder code to the flight. The code itself is a 12-bit number from 0 to 4096 decimal expressed as 4 octal digits from 0000-7777. The pilot dials this code into the control box in the cockpit.
ATC’s radar tickles the transponder which replies with the dialed-in code. ATC’s computers then use the code to look up the flight plan and put the flight’s call sign in abbreviated form on the ATC controller’s scope. And to include it in the data that’s fed out to systems like flight track. This is where you see things like “NW123”, “MSN02”, “N1234B” etc.
Many of the 4096 possible codes are reserved for special uses. And there are far more than 4096 flights airborne at any moment. So how do we solve this dilemma? A code must be unique only within a certain region of airspace. So I can be flying around Florida using the same code as some guy flying around Los Angeles at the same time.
But if he’s flying to FL & I’m flying to LA at the same time, we’re eventually going to end up someplace in the middle in the same airspace region at the same time on the same code. At which point ATC’s computers raise a flag and one of us will be assigned a new code. We dial in the new code in the cockpit, the controller associates the new code with one of the two blips, and all is well.
Nowadays it’s normal to go through 2, 3, or occasionally 4 codes on a transcon flight. Changing codes at all used to be very rare.
As to the future … there are newer systems being deployed which will transmit a unique identifier permanently attached to the aircraft itself. Then that ID would be connected via the ATC flight plan to the callsign to be shown on the ATC scope and in flight track data. But we’re not really there yet.
Cool, thanks for the detailed explanation, LSLGuy.
(Those chemtrail guys sure are nutty. So far their “smoking-gun” screenshots have included the skydivers, several aerial-photography planes, a police surveillance Cessna and even an air-ambulance helicopter!)
