Interficiam Stercore
Well-Known Member
I do the same thing. Even paid for flightradar24. It's an excellet app. But, as you said, CoastGuard, and Police often don't turn on their ADSB transmitters. The police fly so low, you can hear them only slightly, so you think they are far away, until, they are suddenly right on top of you.In the SanFrancisco Bay Area there are a good number of helicopters flying at any given time. I always use the app FlightRadar24 to check what's in the air and to see where it might be heading. Coast Guard helicopters usually show up in the app, while military won't. Tourist helicopters generally fly a predictable route. It's law enforcement helicopters that are the most eradicate, especially if they move out of a patrol route into an active response to something on the ground. This is especially true for the East Bay Regional Park Police helicopters that are all over the place on a nice weekend. The last category are the medical air ambulances - but they typically are going to a hospital or back to their airport bases, and tend to fly using major ground landmarks like highways as the quickest way to get to where they're going.