UKH

Bringing the bin in earlier I spot a couple of C130s passing overhead maybe 4000ft. Next time I look up there are 3, possibly as many as 5 objects broadly where I last saw the hercs. Stopped to watch thinking its a parachute exercise but as they get bigger I keep track of three, they look like big birds of prey except they're spinning or tumbling and moving quite quickly across the wind. This is over a city at dusk. I spend a lot of time in and looking at the sky but I have never seen anything like that. I guess they could have hit a few red kites but they tend to fly alone and lower plus the spinning tumbling objects were travelling across the upper wind. Any ideas?

Jk

Aliens

They are undoubtedly UFOs.

Unlikely to be a military drone, they don't generally have the transponders required to fly in UK airspace, also don't usually do aerobatic manoeuvres.

No transponder required for aircraft in class G (ie 'unclassified' and uncontrolled) airspace - certainly not for manned aircraft anyway, and I'd be surprised if it differed for drones.

IIRC the issue used to be that a UAS like a Predator, (which I assumed is what jk meant by 'military drone'), operates beyond line of sight of the pilot which makes avoiding other traffic problematic. When they have been flown in civilian airspace all other aircraft have been excluded.

This was a while back so could have changed.

Probably  

There was some formation Tucano flying notam'd, could have been them up high, engines drowned out by the lower Hurcules. Makes more sense than drones but not much more.

Jk

Definitely smaller and very different to a predator. They looked like big spinning birds and appeared to be descending. By drone I just generically meant UAV.

Jk

Testing something like this perhaps?

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20058/this-is-our-first-glimpse-of-a-...

That made me feel a bit pukey. 

I watched a pair of bright objects from Arran that seemed to be flying around the Prestwick area on the mainland when bikepacking in Sept. Around dusk they were flying up to a height of about 1000ft with very visible flame trails behind (at times). At first I thought there must be neds setting off fireworks, but very quickly I discounted that as fireworks don't climb, descend to almost ground, then re-ascend, then hover.  Do they? This went on for some time. Maybe 20 minutes. It was a clear, pleasant early autumn evening. I took some video but whatever was happening was 10 miles away so quality is crap but it does show the movement. I had a great mobile signal afterwards and tried checking twitter for others who had seen it but nothing has appeared. I am a sceptic for UFO stuff for obvious reasons. I have no doubt humans are capable of making things fly like that but the thing that gets me is nobody else appears to have seen it, according to the net. Maybe I'm due an ass probing or maybe it's just the US military using Prestwick as a test site. Weird though.

That was the sort of thing I wondered about, lightweight, kicked off the ramp. Seems incredibly unlikely in daylight over a city without a notam.

Jk

Tucanos are retiring very soon - something on local TV about today being the last day, though that could be in the NE and Cumbria.

Yeah, they're based near York and the formation flight was an end of operation celebration. We see plenty about so I'd generally recognise them. Maybe jow light and a bit of haze...

Jk

Round here, kites fly in packs. I've seen upwards of 20 at one time. They also 'play', tackling each other in the air.

Don't worry, we're the good guys - we'll probably only use them to win hearts and minds by distributing pop records and candy floss.

You seem to live everywhere and know everything.