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this is my quest of Medibank net org and

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control science comm as they run

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websites that have a focus on contrails

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I often get people sending me

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photographs of strange-looking contrails

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and asking me if they can if I can

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identify them for them this is a good

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example this is one from a Danny Vaughn

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on Twitter and he says all right my

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quest use your connections and track it

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October 14th Portland noonish and we've

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got these pretty interesting Tron

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contrails here they're curved and shave

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this one looks like it's almost like

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it's at a circle and there's one off in

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a distance which also has this strange

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kind of curve and possibly possibly a

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bend there that might just be a cloud so

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how do we go about tracking down what

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planes might have created these

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contrails but suppose what do we know we

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know it was taken in Portland Oregon and

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we know it was knocked over the 14th and

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about 12:00 noon so what I use is a

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website called flightradar24 comm which

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is basically a tracking site which

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tracks the positions of all the planes

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in the sky they use a technology called

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a DSP which is just a flight tracking

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flight tracking software service ok so

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we get to flightradar24 comm by default

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it's gonna start in Sweden because it's

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a Swedish company so we go over to the

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bookmarks tab over here and set it to

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North America and we're interested in

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Portland Oregon so we go over here to

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Oregon we zoom in and there's Portland

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now one thing you may have noticed

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straight away is there's an awful lot of

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planes these are actually the planes

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that are in the sky right now which is

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quite an incredible amount of air

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traffic when you really think about it

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and if we look over here you see

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Portland as less than some areas but

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still there's quite a lot of planes in

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this general area what we're interested

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in is planes that are making contrails

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so what we can do is filter

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planes out that are too low to make

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contrails so I'm going to go over to

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this gear wheel here go to filters

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enable filtering and do an altitude

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filter and I'm gonna set it to between

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20,000 feet and above and you click the

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plus sign here to add to the filter so

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now it's only going to show the planes

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that are high enough to make contrails

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and you'll see you've got that guess

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we'd have a lot of the clutter around

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around Portland if we click on an

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individual plane like here's one plane

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right now over Portland Delta Airlines

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984 you can see it's a flight from Las

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Vegas to Seattle and it's flying over

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Portland at 31,000 feet nearly today

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2,000 feet so that's a plane that's high

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enough to leave a contra one thing

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that's of interest is that any plane

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that's actually heading towards Portland

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will generally be too low if we turn the

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filters off again you'll see all these

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other planes that are going to Portland

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see is this we're going to pull them out

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it's going to Seattle - that's a

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low-flying plane that his plane going to

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Portland and we see it's actually at

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18,000 feet which is and it's descending

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fairly rapidly and that's going to low

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to make a contrail so if we just filter

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the planes are flying over Portland

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that'll be the ones that are actually

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making the contrails you can see from

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Portland now I'm going back to the tweet

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it was October 14th and noonish now what

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we can do in flightradar24 is replay the

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flight activity if you have an account

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you can go back as far as in month if

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you don't have an account the free

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service will let you do it for I think

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it's about a week so you can still do

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trails that you've seen that day or in

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the last week or so but since I've

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signed up for an account I can go back

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to we just check what was it 10 14 yes

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October the 14th and the time now the

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time is in UTC time UTC is a universal

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time zone

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and since this was a couple of weeks ago

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it was in Pacific Daylight Time and the

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difference between Pacific Daylight Time

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and UTC is seven hours there seven hours

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ahead of us it's basically similar to a

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Greenwich Mean Time the same as

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Greenwich Mean Time

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so noonish would be 12 plus 7 is 1900

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hours or 7 o'clock in the afternoon

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UTC so we can start playback all right

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so what I'm going to do is just pause it

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straight away and have a look at what

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lights we see over Portland at about

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noon ish here's one AAS a witch in

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Alaska Alaska Airlines and you see us

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made a little kink in there probably not

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the type of thing we're actually looking

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at Southwest Airlines oh there's an

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interesting one this is Southwest

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Airlines flight from Oakland to Seattle

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is flying in a loop over Portland so

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that seemed like a very good candidate

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for a plane which we're believing this

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type of contrail so what else do we have

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which is flying from that's flying to

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Portland for some reason it's at 24,000

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feet but here we've got a plane flying

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in a loop oh for Portland why would he

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be doing such a thing

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why would he be flying in a loop if it's

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going to Seattle the reason that planes

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fly in loops although technically as a

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circuit a loop would be flying

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head-over-heels is that there's a lot of

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traffic going to Seattle these planes

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here are all going to Seattle and it's a

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very busy Airport and they have to

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schedule the arrivals in a very strict

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order they have to arrive you're pretty

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much on a you know 1 minute window so

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you can't just have planes just flying

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directly in their landing air traffic

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control in Seattle is going to tell the

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plane to

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you arrived a little bit later or a

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little bit earlier than before and

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normally what they do is they will tell

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the plane to just take a slight

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deviation from their direct route in and

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they'll fly in a little circuit like

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this or sometimes they will fly in a

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they'll just fly off to the side and

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then back onto the track again it's just

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basically a way of slowing down the

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planes arrival so it can arrive at a

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particular particular time now one thing

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we can do in the filters is we can

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filter by the airport that the plane is

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going to so I'm going to do

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Seattle here SCA and do in so we just

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have the planes that are going into

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Seattle now I'll turn off the altitude

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filter so we can see all of the flights

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and let me just turn this back on get

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rid of the filters here so these are all

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the flights that are going into Seattle

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at that time and assume right out so we

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can get a countrywide view just get some

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perspective as to just how many planes

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are heading for Seattle at that

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particular time noonish on the 14th of

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October let's just pause it here so here

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there's a lot of planar so there's over

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50 planes visible right here and if we

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zoom in to Seattle here's the one plane

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that's doing the loop may have made one

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of those curved contrails

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let's have a look at some of these other

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planes over here notice Blaine here did

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a quite a major deviation from here to

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here and then it's going back in again

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so maybe a similar type of thing instead

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of doing a circuit it just went over

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here and then went over here which again

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changes the the order in which it

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arrives and you see if you look at the

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actual planes coming in they're very

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very close to each other here's Alaska 3

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1 1 and here's that's the Southwest

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Airlines flight coming in and here's

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another flight and you see there there's

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not very much room for error here that's

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a very interesting one you can see that

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they did a lot of deviations of its

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flight here as it came in didn't

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to fly straight in is doing a lot of

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moving around looking to get in at the

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right time so I hope that shows you how

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you can track down particular planes one

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thing you might want to do if you don't

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know the exact time is just simply let

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the simulation let the the recording

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play for a while and you'll see all

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these other planes coming in this is

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filtering for Seattle at the moment and

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here's another another fly and you see

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again doll flying directly in it's

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making these these adjustments so that

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it arrives on time so you'll see a lot

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of a lot of this type of thing if you if

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we change things so that we see all the

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tracks at once you know meta tracks

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pause it now let's go in and just look

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at all the tracks you can see there's

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quite a variety in the incoming planes

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tracks they don't fly in what you might

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expect a straight line as they are

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arriving they have all these adjustments