Monitoring Planes in VR-840     Planes entering VR-840 must monitor 255.4 MHz, AM, while in VR-840, and generally announce on this frequency that they are entering the route, a couple minutes before entering.  Generally, several minutes before this, they tell Boston Center ATC that they are proceeding to the route, usually on 263.05 or 282.2 MHz AM.  Other frequencies sometimes used prior to entering are the Portland approach frequencies, ie 381.2 and 353.9.    While in the route, F-16s from Vt ANG, Burlington, often use 138.525 for air to air communications.  Other bases use many different A/A freqs, too numerous to mention.

VR-840 begins at Pleasant Mountain just west of Bridgton, Maine, and proceeds north through Locke Mills, Rangeley and up around Greenville, Maine.  Planes are allowed to fly as low as 100' above ground level in VR-840, but usually they fly at 500' and at speeds typically around 500MPH.

   Several different planes have been observed flying VR-840, including
F-16, A-10, F-15, AV-8, EA-6B , B1b , P3, KC-135 , KC-130, T-37, T-45, and a few others.

Below are a few pictures I've taken of the planes. Note, at first I found it very difficult to get a picture of a plane coming over at 500' and 500mph, mainly because it is hard to get it in the viewfinder of the camera, but I am slowly learning the techniques necessary.  Some of the pictures are low quality, others aren't too bad, others are pretty good.  The first pictures were generally taken with a VHS video camera, and captured via computer video capture card, these were all limited to 640x480 resolution, and weren't very good.  Later I graduated to various digital cameras, first to a Sony digital videocamera and eventually to a Nikon D7 with a cheap 500mm lens.  In general, I've found that the long focal length or optical zoom is more important than megapixels for getting good pictures.  It is also important to have a camera with a real eyepiece rather than a screen for viewing, and it is preferable to have a camera that doesn't blank out the view when the picture is snapped,  because you lose the plane from the view while processing. When using a zoom lens, I used to start zoomed out to find the plane, then zoom in, however with the fixed lens, this isn't possible, so at first, I had problems finding the planes with the 500mm lens.  However I quickly learned to keep both eyes open, and if you focus on the plane with the eye not looking through the camera, it somehow guides you to find the plane in the camera view. I can now generally locate a plane in the camera in approximately a second.
I've also found that it is almost impossible to get a good picture when taking a picture into the sun (partly because my lens is very cheap, and the sun reflections destroy the contrast), and I generally get poor results on cloudy days, in both cases because the side of the plane in view isn't illuminated.  The best results are obtained on bright days with the sun behind, and in particular, bright days when there is snow on the ground to reflect up against the bottom of the plane. 

I'm trying to keep the newest pictures in this main page (although I'm about a year behind in keeping it up to date), and the older pictures can be found by clicking the links above.  One advantage of the older pictures above is that some of them include links to video clips of the planes, since many of them were taken with the video camera. 

Anyway, the pictures below were taken from April 2008 thru April 2009. 

Below, April 20, 2008 
 I heard a slow moving ROAR approaching from the east.  Couldn't see anything at
first, then throught the trees I saw this weird looking plane.  At
first I thought it was a B1b, but this one has 4 engines on the wings,
and has a weird looking nose, and has a huge engine sized bump just off the co-pilots window area.  Weirdest plane I've ever seen. 






Below, a closeup of the tail.

                                                

After quite a bit of discussion on a milair mailing list, the plane was finally identified as a Canadian test bed plane.  Ie the bump on the side was apparently an engine it was testing.   It actually wasn't flying up VR840, but just happened to fly over between point alpha and my location.
  One of the people in my list found a picture of the plane, ie http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=0026697&size=M  
Note the Canadian flag on the tail, compared to picture above.    Anyway, this was a strange one to see. The plane was observed flying through the area over a 2 or 3 day period.

July 12 2008
 Unknown F-16 flew up VR-840




July 18 2008
   Yankee 69, a Marine KC-130 flew up VR-840.







Aug 20 2008
  Sniper-1 , a Vt F-16 .  Notice the missles on the wings.




October 4 2008
    Yankee 72, another Marine KC-130




Below, October 23, 2008

Goose-79.  Strange looking C-130.  Apparently has some interesting electronics installed both in the nose, and back by the tail.






October 23 2008 
  Another SNIPER flight of F-16s flew up VR-840.  Actually the zoome in, in front of the above Goose flight.



Also October 23, 2008, 
Yankee-72, a NY  marine C-130
Tail number 5353  



December 2, 2008
Sniper-1 , Vt F-16, again, lots of apparently live missles on the wings.



Feb 11 2009
VAPOR-1, another Vt F-16
Picture blurry, but good enough to identify it as a Vt plane.




March 10, 2009
   Sniper-1 flight.  Vt F-16



Note, the above image shows a good view of the missles on the wings, including some color bars that apparently denote whether or not the 3 sections of the missle are armed or not.  Supposedly there are 3 parts to each missle, the "seeker",  the "warhead", and the "propellant", front, middle, rear, respectively, and on each section  there are colored bands indicating whether they are live.   From what I have read, a front yellow stripe means live electronics, if that is followed by brown stripes, then the missle is live with warhead and propellant.  Blue bands apparently mean that section is inert. You can ALMOST figure out the colors in this picture, but not quite.  It is clear though that there are some yellow bands, but I'm not sure they are in the positions described above.

However, this same plane made a 2nd pass on   March 12, 2009  



This picture isn't quite as sharp, but it clearly shows some of the bands as yellow.  In any event, I'm now convinced that these missles are at least partially active, although probably just the front electronics section.

March 24, 2009

DEMO-1 flight, again Vt F-16s   tail#  87-001294



A bit more than an hour later, the same flight came up the route a second time. 




April 14, 2009
   SNIPER-1 flight.  {this is the plane with the missles}. 
Nice view of the "Snoopy" tail art, which is new for the Vt planes.




April 17 2009

Listening to DAGGER flight (Vt F-16s) do 2 vs 2 air-air intercept practice on the radio. They were nearby, and I was able to see their contrails working in the nearby Laser airspace.  Then I saw an airliner fly through the airspace.  Then I heard on the radio......   the
chase pair declares two groups of boogies, and goes after them, saying somthing like "lead group 35,000".  Then I hear something like "DUDE...that lead group is an air liner!", and I look up, and see a
small vapor trail going after the airliner.   Funny!  Below is when the F-16 is attempting to chase the airliner.





April 20, 2009
   JACKAL flight.



This one is interesting because it appears to NOT be one of the Vt ANG birds.  There is a big "SI" on the tail, which is supposed to indicate 183FW out of Springfield, Illinois, Illinois ANG.  However I was directed to a web page which showed that the 183rd was being deactivated, and it's planes were being transferred to other groups, including Burlington.  So this is apparently one of the transferred planes, but hasn't been repainted with the Vt colors yet.

April 30, 2009
  Yankee-73 flight. 
   This was a flight of 2 KC-130s that went directly overhead, one right after the other, separated by only about 7 seconds.






The 2nd plane, ie tail# 442, is a plane that has been reported as being used during space shuttle launches.