The F2TH is a Falcon 2000, made by Dassault Falcon Jet Corporation. Nothing spooky here at all. The plane is registered as follows:
N-number : N1128B Aircraft Serial Number : 83 Aircraft Manufacturer : DASSAULT AVIATION Model : FALCON 2000 Engine Manufacturer : ALLIEDSIGN Model : CFE-738 SER Aircraft Year : 1999 Owner Name : FLORIDA POWER & LIGHT CO Owner Address : PO BOX 14000 JUNO BEACH, FL, 33408-0420 Type of Owner : Corporation Registration Date : 09-Jul-1999 Airworthiness Certificate Type : Standard Approved Operations : Transport
Needless to say, no beverages were served on this flight.
This flight was tracked using both the passur website for McCarran (LAS) and Los Angeles (LAX). The map gets pretty busy due to the overlay of displays, but N20RA shows up on the display to the west of Indian Springs (KINS). The flight route is TKM..MCY..CLARR.J100.LAX..NSI/0140.
There is a gap in coverage between the Passur display for LAS and LAX.
After flying roughly from Hesperia to El Segundo, N20RA head towards the Channel Islands. Passur's AirportMonitor 2 allows a bit of zoom and pan.
The plane is no longer tracked just short of San Nicolas Island, probably due to a change in transponder code.
This Gulfstream II popped up on the passur display for about 2 minutes as it headed towards Desert Rock. Sometimes the flights do land at Desert Rock, and other times they head on out to Groom Lake. I suspect the route was carefully picked in order to inspect Art Bell's loop antenna. Most likely, this is N105TB, the Lincoln Labs G2.
Information on Flight International can be found here.
Note the use of TKM as the origin of the flight. Flights from Groom Lake generally lie and use TNX (Tonopah Test Range) as their origin, but often airport code TKM is used exclusively for Groom Lake. [TNX may be either the TTR or Groom Lake. You sort of tell what it means by context.] Oxnard is a civilian airport, but are military facilities near it such as Pt. Mugu, the Pacific Missile Test Center, and NAVSEA (Naval Surface Warfare Center). Regarding spotting such a plane, it flew over Mercury at about 20kft. Lots O' luck.
The mystery flight is highlighted orbiting the Nellis ranges. It pops up on the display around 9:27AM. When this flight was monitored in real time, no flight ID was present, though the aircraft was listed as type B733. A sample line of the Passur raw data follows:
lasD,2,213,4630,214,AWE100,LAS,LAX,B733,BOACH1,,CIVET,5B95
BOACH and CIVET are both fixes. However, it is unlikely that this flight is listed correctly, unless of course the pilot has a death wish to be shot down over Area 51.
An AVI video of the screen display can be viewed here. (1.72Mbytes)
This is not a Janet flight, but civilian flights going to Edwards AFB are interesting too. Note that this map covers the airspace around LAX. The aircraft type B752 comes back to a Boeing 757. This plane is probably the F35 avionics test bed 757. Assuming the plane is approaching Edwards from the south, you might want to check out this viewing spot. The origin R250 might refer to one of the restricted airspaces near Edwards, such as R-2508.
From www.landings.com :
N-number : N757A
Aircraft Serial Number : 22212
Aircraft Manufacturer : BOEING
Model : 757-200 SERIES
Engine Manufacturer : P&W
Model : PW2037
Aircraft Year : 1982
Owner Name : BOEING LOGISTICS SPARES INC
Owner Address : M/S 4W-40
: PO BOX 3707
SEATTLE, WA, 98124-2207
Type of Owner : Corporation
Registration Date : 09-Nov-2000
Airworthiness Certificate Type : Experimental
Approved Operations : Research and Development
Janet 202 is a flight probably to Groom Lake since it fell off the radar pretty quickly. NASA906 is a flight from Nellis AFB (LSV) to Moffett Federal Airfield (NUQ)
NASA XYZ is registered in the civilian database as NXYZNA, so NASA 906 translates to N906NA.
N-number : N906NA
Aircraft Serial Number : 65-10326
Aircraft Manufacturer : NORTHROP
Model : T-38A
Aircraft Year :
Owner Name : NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTARTION
Owner Address : JOHNSON SPACE CNTR NASA RD 1
HOUSTON, TX, 77058
Type of Owner : Government
Registration Date : 12-Oct-1978
Airworthiness Certificate Type : Not Specified
N-number : N904NA
Aircraft Serial Number : 63-8204
Aircraft Manufacturer : NORTHROP
Model : T-38A
Aircraft Year :
Owner Name : NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Owner Address : LYNDON B JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
HOUSTON, TX, 77058
Type of Owner : Government
Registration Date : 12-Oct-1978
Airworthiness Certificate Type : Not Specified
Normally the Tonopah Test Range code is TNX, but occasionally it shows up as TKM. The route is near the top of the map, highlighted in orange. The times indicates are roughly when the flight showed up on passur.
Photographs of N4529W at Palmdale can be found here.
The route is hard to see with so many planes. Look for the red tinted stripe running from the middle of the image towards the bottom, veering towards the left.
Return flight from Palmdale to LAS
On federal holidays, the large Janet 737's don't fly. However, the smaller Janet Beech aircraft do operate. This flight probably originated at Groom Lake, given the location where it first showed up on the passur display. On the 95 mile coverage passur display, the tail number doesn't appear, but on the smaller range displays, N27RA is noted.
The fight of Janet N661BA to Salt Lake City is usual. Janet N662BA is probably flying to Edwards North Base, though you can't rule out that it landed at China Lake. The display dropped off the screen just at the boundary of the restricted airspace, where it may have changed its transponder code. The Janet 737 flights of WWW201 and WW223 look routine. WWW201 was most likely coming from Groom Lake.
Flight WWW267 made a sudden turn towards Groom Lake.
