What place is it????

[Steve]

I saw a twin engine high wing fixed gear airplane takeoff at my airport a few days ago. Looks similar to the Cessna 337 but had a engine on each wing. Looked to be a 4-6 seater. Anyone know what plane this is?

 

[MTOP_set]

Steve,
You may want to check out <airliners.net> plenty of aircraft pictures for your research. You may be looking at a Twin Otter (DH-6) but your description was a bit vague.

 

[iludiumq36]

If it's piston and small, maybe it's a Partenavia P68. You can look it up on Google and see if that's the one.

 

[Traumahawk]

iludiumq36.
I was about to post about a strange little fixed gear high wing twin here at Craig field also, you nailed it on the head when I searched it.
The co flying it does some kind of survey with that and a few 210's...has a rod with a wire hanging off the back.
Neat little multi, don't know how fast it can go with 0-360's on it..looks heavy.

Regards'
---T-hawk

 

[iludiumq36]

Yeah, I've seen them up and down the Florida Panhandle. The pilots wear jumpsuits with a litttle "A" symbol on them. Some kind of engineering company. I saw an ad looking for pilots to fly them.

 

[Bebop]

They are doing FCC signal leakage tests.

Basically they are flying grid patterns over cities looking for folks stealing cable TV.

For the life of me I can't remember their name. The other major player is FlightTrac, they fly duchess', centurions, and skymasters.

 

[TDTURBO]

I used to do CFL checks on the ground, if I knew they were doing them in the air, I would changes jobs and do them in a heart beat.

 

[Timebuilder]

Cable RF emissions are extemely low, and stealing cable service wouldn't produce any more leakage than a legit hookup.

Did you possibly mean field strength testing?

 

[Bebop]

Yes, sometimes people stealing cable can create huge problems.
Like the guy who spliced into his neighbors cable and used plain copper wire to run it to his house. That is one huge beacon just emitting RF.

Check out this website for more information.


http://www.flighttrac.com/

 

[Timebuilder]

While it is possible for someone stealing cable to be that stupid, it is rare. A poor job would almost certainly overload a line amp, narrowing the search area.

Most thefts are of the "hacker" variety, from a knowlegeable background, or or from those who seek the advice of a friend who has the expertise. Coax and F connectors are available at the store. Why anyone would resort to a search by air for theft is beyond imagination. It is understandable that an air survey makes sense for defective components in the system. That would be a good way to discover signal egress.

 

[FlightTraker]

Let me see if I can shed some light on the subject. I have flown for Flight Trac, Inc. for the past year and a half. We fly GPS grids over specific cable systems looking for RF leaks. This is an FCC required test and we are looking for leaks that interfere with ATC frequencies and navaids. However, to our equipment a leak is a leak, and we do find some people stealing cable. When we are done collecting data over an area, the cable company will receive a map showing all the "hot spots" we found. Then the cable guys go and investigate these areas. It may be a legitamate leak, or Joe Blow splicing cable to all his neighbors out of his house. Each cable system has a flyover anniversary date set by the FCC that must be complied each year, so we keep busy.

Flight-Trac has two Duchess' based in Valpraiso, IN that do all the work East of the Rockies, and a Duchess, C210, and C337 based in Seattle for the West Coast stuff. Our callsign is "cablecheck"

The plane in question sounds like our competitor Martek(I don't know if I spelled that right), they are based in Jacksonville, FL.



FlightTraker