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High Altitude Helicopters over Cleveland


jerhiko

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We moved to the Cleveland area about two years ago. Our home sits on a fairly busy incoming flight path for Hopkins Airport. I have always been a major airplane geek and feel over the past two years I have paid fairly close attention to the sky. This evening I noticed a helicopter, by sound first, due to its extreme height. I thought the height of its flight path was odd but quickly discounted it. By the time the sun set this evening I have seen two more. Extremely high altitude for a typical helicopter flight. I know Chinooks fly fairly high. This was much higher than that. I'm not a conspiracy theory nut but i really thought this was odd. I would love some thoughts on what was up.

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Flight for life choppers taking victims of an accident to the hospital?

They had orders to avoid the airport's air space?

Edited by .ZZ.
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I live a few blocks from the nearest life flight pad. 

I have never seen helicopters fly that high of of a flight path. It must have been a very long distance trip.

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Airports have airspace like ZZ said.

Although the configuration of each Class C airspace area is individually tailored, the airspace usually consists of a 5 NM radius core surface area that extends from the surface up to 4,000 feet above the airport elevation, and a 10 NM radius shelf area that extends no lower than 1,200 feet up to 4,000 feet above airport elevation.  https://www.faasafety.gov/gslac/alc/course_content.aspx?cID=42&sID=505&preview=true

If they aren't cleared through the airports airspace, they must fly around or over it. It is not uncommon for helicopters to fly 10,000 + feet. It's just that helicopters are less common than airplanes, therefore these things just aren't seen as much, but certainly not unheard of.

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Also did you check Flightradar24/FlightAware or anything at the time? 

They may have been visible on the app.

I’m not sure how easy it would be to try to find helicopter flights in the past on those sites. 

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OP, can you explain how you guessed the altitude?  That is an exceptionally difficult thing to do, and it usually involves assumptions that can be unreliable - eg amount of haze, perceived height for the angular speed, guessed height based on a size estimate of the craft...

Please tell us (and explain in detail how you got to) whatever height range you are claiming.

But you're right - choppers usually stay well under 8000 feet or so - they don't work well in thinner air.  If you can catch it again, try recording it as a movie (do not use digital zoom) and then post the footage and tell us what sort of camera/phone.  We can then try to work out a range.....

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6 hours ago, jerhiko said:

We moved to the Cleveland area about two years ago. Our home sits on a fairly busy incoming flight path for Hopkins Airport. I have always been a major airplane geek and feel over the past two years I have paid fairly close attention to the sky. This evening I noticed a helicopter, by sound first, due to its extreme height. I thought the height of its flight path was odd but quickly discounted it. By the time the sun set this evening I have seen two more. Extremely high altitude for a typical helicopter flight. I know Chinooks fly fairly high. This was much higher than that. I'm not a conspiracy theory nut but i really thought this was odd. I would love some thoughts on what was up.

Can you make a stab at trying to identify them? The Chinook can get up to 20,000 ft if it makes the effort, but they're very easily recognizable. The Blackhawk can just about make that height too. 

Edited by Manfred von Dreidecker
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4 hours ago, Timonthy said:

Also did you check Flightradar24/FlightAware or anything at the time? 

They may have been visible on the app.

I’m not sure how easy it would be to try to find helicopter flights in the past on those sites. 

Civil craft might (although not all private aircraft are), but military aircraft usually won't show.

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7 hours ago, jerhiko said:

We moved to the Cleveland area about two years ago. Our home sits on a fairly busy incoming flight path for Hopkins Airport. I have always been a major airplane geek and feel over the past two years I have paid fairly close attention to the sky. This evening I noticed a helicopter, by sound first, due to its extreme height. I thought the height of its flight path was odd but quickly discounted it. By the time the sun set this evening I have seen two more. Extremely high altitude for a typical helicopter flight. I know Chinooks fly fairly high. This was much higher than that. I'm not a conspiracy theory nut but i really thought this was odd. I would love some thoughts on what was up.

Was there anything unusual about the sound ? I would have thought that a high-altittude (however you define that) helicopter would have sounded kinda muted, if it even made any audible noise at all ? 

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Training exercise, Heli med evac, avoiding air space? All plausible explanations.

 

Was trundling up the M61 in Lancashire the other week and heard a very distinct noise, thought I had a blow out at first, eventually spotted a Chinook at, a very rough guess, about 200 - 500 ft, was an awesome sight, there's been an increase in military convoys aswell, usually 1 a week upto 3-4 a week. Felt sorry for the guys in the WMIK's! 

 

Keep an eye out for more helicopters. 

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We often get the Apache fly over us sometimes it's not much above roof hight,other times it just a little spec, apparently it can fly at about 25000 ft 

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29 minutes ago, Matt221 said:

We often get the Apache fly over us sometimes it's not much above roof hight,other times it just a little spec, apparently it can fly at about 25000 ft 

21000 according to the Wookipedia. That seems to be about the maximum that can be expected.

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I have seen Apaches on high flight paths a few times in the past now that you mention it. These were not Apaches or Chinooks, could have possible been blackhawks I suppose. Didn't sound like Huey's.  My only way to gauge "high altitude" is by saying they were much higher than normal in my opinion. Probably nothing. And probably nothing that deserved a post here. It just struck me very odd last night and was hoping to hear some logical reason for such high helicopter flight paths. Believe it or not, there is quite a bit of air traffic over Cleveland and I was just not accustomed to seeing this. Especially three over a hour and a half period.

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Heli altitude record:

Quote

About thirty years after the record set by Jean Boulet on a SA315 B “Lama” helicopter, Fred North, professional pilot, takes an AS 350 B2 “Squirrel” to the fantastic altitude of 12954 m

link

 

Edited by toast
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34 minutes ago, Manfred von Dreidecker said:

Civil craft might (although not all private aircraft are), but military aircraft usually won't show.

Except when they f up and leave their adsb transmitters on. Which has happened during missions. 

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I've seen this before OP, twice. It was about eight years ago, a couple weeks apart. Each time, the faint sound of a helicopter caught my attention so I looked for, found, then became astonished at how high up they were. I had no idea they could fly that high.

Both times they flew over me moving very slowly to the south. I watched until they were just a tiny dot some six or seven miles downrange of me when they suddenly went into a hover and just sat there for about thirty minutes before moving off to the East. Never found out anything about them, or what their mission may have been.

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On 10/22/2017 at 11:27 PM, Timonthy said:

Except when they f up and leave their adsb transmitters on. Which has happened during missions. 

I've seen on Flightradar an RAF A330 Voyager flying what looked very much like an air-to-air refuelling pattern just off the coast of Syria. 

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Flightradar is changing their systems to include many (but not all) military aircraft.  Don't have time now, but it's something to do with 'MLAT' being added so it's not just the 'normal' ADS-B transponders...  I'm out of my depth here - Merc, where are you?

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Oops, I'm tired...

4 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

Flightradar FlightAware is changing their systems to include many (but not all) military aircraft.  Don't have time now, but it's something to do with 'MLAT' being added so it's not just the 'normal' ADS-B transponders...  I'm out of my depth here - Merc, where are you?

 

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