I'm sorry, this whole thing just gets a great big "NWMT" from me.

Flight 77's transponder *was* off. Being as one who stared at the data a great deal, and being as we released the tracking data to the press..... there is no evidence in the tracking data that flight 77 caused the pentagon event. That sort of proof would need to come from the black box and physical evidence.

Calvin

What does NWMT mean?? I couldn't find it in the acronym finder.

Hmm. I submitted it using their form, maybe they'll include it soon.

NWMT=Not Worth My Time

How do you know that?

He's part of the Illuminati, of course. His BBS nickname wasn't a dead giveaway?

What is the Illuminati?

It's the secret society of those who have the true power and control over all of the people and governments on our planet. Everything you've read about the consipiracies is true, from the moon landing, to the assasination of JFK, to the Sept. 11 attacks. All of those things (and many more) were carefully staged and planned by the Illuminati. All world governments are simply pawns in their mysterious game.

But Calvin will deny that they exist. Watch.

Yeah, I just spent the last 20 min reading about it.

Tony, you've been talked to about this before... don't make us bump up the date of California falling into the ocean just to teach you a lesson.

Calvin, I know you can't give specific info about military flights, but pre-Sept. 11, in certain parts of the country, wouldn't it be a LONG time before we could scramble an interceptor fighter jet and have it find and catch up to a jetliner? I would imagine that on the coasts, and esp. in Florida it would be no big deal (because there are more military flights along our boarders).

They don't exist.

Calvin

See? He denies it. I told you. That's proof right there.

Where do you live? Louisiana? See attachment. This BBS doesn't allow truly large attachments, so I cut it down to just Louisiana. The fun looking colors on the right side and along the top are a composite input from our friendly neighborhood satellites. Those green big blobs are TRACONS, anything that flies within one of those bubbles can be seen to a 6 second resolution. The squarish smaller areas are some of the restricted zones. There are several levels of zone restrictions, if a plane enters one without permission they are not likely to make it back out. Each one of the white dots is an object flying in the air, be it plane, helicopter, whatever. As you can see, I am tracking the real time transit of flight AAL 633 to Dallas Fort Worth in Texas. Notice, the plane is flying precisely according to its indicated route. It passed over MSY and will pass very near the restricted area in a short bit. The tag (transponder response) indicates the plane is 42 minutes to landing cruisng at 44,300 feet, it is a boeing b-752.

There are various levels of drill available, for example, I can latch onto a private flight and pull up all sorts of information like you wouldn't believe. We monitor, record and track the entire north american airspace, and have records that go pretty far back as well.

So if you *really* want to know where your mom is or has been, I could tell you in two seconds. ;-)

Calvin

That is pretty damn cool. I have a couple questions for you if you don't mind..

1) What is the smallest object you can see in the air? Is the signal you get from the plane the result of radar or a transponder?

2) What happens if a plane strays from it's flight path, or an object is detected that has no flight path? I see you work for a private company. Do you share information with the government? For instance if you see a convoy of MiG's coming from the pacific, or you just found a ufo somewhere, do you contact the government or do y'all just mind your own business?

Is the signal you get from the plane the result of radar or a transponder?

Both, if I understand it correctly. It is the result of a radar reflection as well as a transponder code response. They are two different (yet integrated) systems as I understand it.

Here's the way it works. It depends on the which environment you are in. If you are in a terminal area (within 5 miles of the terminal), you will likely have a primary target but if you are responding to their transponder inquiry, the primary target is insignificant and unimportant given most transponders now send altitude information. When you first contact approach, you are given a squawk code and they enteryour tail numberIf into the compute. If you are enroute (cross country) then those radar sites usually are very spread out and primary returns aren't always generated. In fact, in some areas of the country, they cannot even pick up your transponder unless your are 3000' above the ground level.

Almost every plane has a transponder in it. For acess to certain airspace it is required.

Most VFR flights "squawk" 1200 unless you opt for "flight following". They typically do not file a flight plan and if they do, they can deviate at will. The only thing the flight plan is used for is to find you if you turn up missing. There is simply no way to distinguish between planes on a VFR squawk.

The Flyte Comm information provided above was I believe a little in jest. I do not believe they could actually pick up much meaningful information from a private flight. Even IFR flight plans typically just list the plane, tail number, air speed, flight route, departure time, number of people on board and Pilot's name. No passenger list or anything else. If it is a VFR flight, then they could not pick up any information simply because there is no way to distinquish which plane is which.

I believe Flyte Comm picks up a feed from the FAA and puts it into a format people can access. There are other companies that provide the same or similar service, itracku, trip.com, flightview, etc.

Yep, you're right. VFR flights do tend to be a problem. There's always a number of things in the system producing radar echos without clues, and those are honestly just stripped out to simplify matters.

Regarding the FAA data: We obtained the data, but not easily. We actually had to basically get a bill approved in congress that granted access to the data. There are 6 companies originally that have primary access to that data. Of the 6 companies, only a couple are in the business of selling the data. Other companies have secondary access to the data by way of purchase from us.

Of course, today, we have access to a much greater amount of information than FAA ground radar. We really can find out names and addresses! The FAA does not furnish passenger records of course, but I'll give you two guesses ;-).

Something to think about:

There's a company across town that does people-tracking. They have access to cell phone data, and the initial feed of triangulated-longitude-latitude numbers on a per cell phone basis. They're using that data semi-anonymously to compute traffic congestion. They have a nifty plot/visualization that shows all these dots fuzzing along the highways. They can compute the average speed based on the cell phones! cute. ;-) Two guesses as to what company that is?

Calvin

We can see anything that flies IFR pretty accurately. We get lots of ghost "unknown" signals all the time. You go crazy trying to figure out what they all are. This is after military is filtered out too, so you just wonder... ;-)

When a plane strays from its flight path, nothing happens. It happens all the time. Unlike a highway, you have no roads with markers that let you know you're off... many pilots aren't perfect anyway. Lots of them are pretty precise though.

We're not responsible for national security. Even if we did see something out of the ordinary, we can only report it. But I'll tell you what, if I see a vonvoy of UFOs over your house I'll let you know.

:-D,
Calvin

What do IFR and VFR stand for?

Instrument Flight Rules
and
Visual Flight Rules.

They require two different levels of pilot certification. A large number of private pilots are not certified to fly in certain conditions if there is not enough visibility to fly VFR, for example.

http://www.gov.im/airport/atc/defn.htm