Eastern Panhandle Low-flying MilAir questions

[lebrunmn]

A few days ago, I was shoveling snow in our back yard, when a very large military transport aircraft came flying down the valley below our property. It looked like a C-17--really big--flying between our ridge and the ridge across the valley, just above the North River. Knowing our property elevation and the elevation of the ridge across from us, this sucker was probably only 1000 or 1200 feet above the ground! It was startling to see that huge beast flying so low. We actually see them fairly regularly around here.

I'm certainly not opposed to our military folks practicing their terrain-following radar / nap-of-earth flying techniques. They have to train somewhere--and this is a pretty sparsely populated place to do it. But being the scanner geek that I am, if they're planning to join me in my living room some day, along with their a/c, I'd like to hear it on a scanner. I'm assuming that these folks are from the 167 Airlift Wing in Martinsburg--but that's just a guess.

When the a/c flew over, I immediately "ran" to my shack to check flightaware.com and ADS-B Exchange to see if I could track the flight--but no dice--I didn't see anything in our area. My questions are:

1. Are these types of training flights ever shown on these flight trackers? (Thinking I may already know the answer to this one.)
2. Has anyone ever heard these folks on the MilAir band and if so what were those freqs? (I know they probably change fairly often.)

I was going to ask in the Maryland forum's Sticky Thread for Mid-Atlantic MilAir, but thought I'd check here with the "locals" before heading over there. Does anyone in the Panhandle or Frederick Co. Va area have any info to share?

Thanks,

 

[jonwienke]

Close Call is probably your best bet, or doing a bandwidth scan with an SDR (a RTL stick can cover 10MHz/s if set up correctly).

 

[lebrunmn]

Close Call is probably your best bet, or doing a bandwidth scan with an SDR (a RTL stick can cover 10MHz/s if set up correctly).

That’s a good idea, Jon. Think I’ll just dedicate one scanner to MilAir band close call from now on.

Thanks,

 

[BM82557]

The 167th uses the published freqs when they arrive/depart the MRB area -- Berkeley County - Airports Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference but in a location like that and at that low altitude you're probably not going to hear much if anything. They are usually at less than 2000 ft when they are in the pattern here for touch and go's. My location is right under where they turn eastward from the northbound leg of the pattern. Kind of wish they were a little lower though so their jetblast could melt/blow the snow off of our roof!!

 

[lebrunmn]

The 167th uses the published freqs when they arrive/depart the MRB area -- Berkeley County - Airports Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference but in a location like that and at that low altitude you're probably not going to hear much if anything. They are usually at less than 2000 ft when they are in the pattern here for touch and go's. My location is right under where they turn eastward from the northbound leg of the pattern. Kind of wish they were a little lower though so their jetblast could melt/blow the snow off of our roof!!

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction for Shepherd Field--forgot that was the original name of the place. We could use a little jetblast today for certain!