[NLRS] Slightly off topic, strange airplane

[Brent Casavant]

On Sat, 4 Dec 2004 W0ZQ at aol.com wrote:

> The plane was a two engine (prop) of fair size, say about 1/2 the size  of a
> C130.   It did not appear to be military.   It was  flying west to east at say
> 2,000' or so, somewhat low.     What caught my attention was the large
> horizontal loop "antenna" (I'm assuming  its an antenna).   There was a strut out
> the back of the tail and a  second strut out the front of the nose and a cable
> (wire?) strung all the way  around outside of the plane; from the tip of the
> nose strut to the tip of the  left wing, to the tip of the tail strut, to the
> tip of the right wing, back to  the tip of the nose strut.   It looked like
> someone had taken a pencil  and drawn a box all around the very outside of the
> airplane.    A  flying horizontal loop.    Like I said, it look strange and I've
> never seen anything like it before.
>
> My guess is its some kind of downward looking magnetic detection  device ...
> perhaps for pipelines or ???.    Like I said, I don't  think it was military.

Just a SWAG, but the first thing that came to mind was one of the
aircraft the FAA uses for flight inspection (i.e. certifying and
calibrating navigational aids such as ILS, VOR/DME, etc).  I know
most of those are smaller Lear or Beach aircraft, but there are a
number of others, and I have no idea if they look like what you
described.

Check out this for more information:

 	http://avn.faa.gov/index.asp?xml=fioo/fihistory

Brent

-- 
Brent Casavant			http://www.angeltread.org/
KD5EMB				-.- -.. ..... . -- -...
44 54'24"N 93 03'21"W 907FASL	EN34lv