Interesting; DND is using 9H-TQ #4D2372, I will need to look up the contract for that. Was it open to bids? What is the scope of the contract? It's a Maltese company, Hi Fly Malta, who operate the plane, not a Canadian company. How did that happen? π€
I remembered that company name, sure enough it's not the first time they've been used, suggesting they have a relationship with the Canadian government. No reason a Canadian air carrier couldn't do this. It's time to monitor their flights more closely.
If you used the Moments I made, tracking entire categories of planes, you better bookmark them or save the links elsewhere before they're gone. I used these all the time. Elon continues to work hard to remove useful features and drive content creators away from Twitter.
I've been tracking aircraft by exploiting their transponder emissions for years, and I still see new things every day. I'm only one of many of people who exploit open sources to tease out untold stories; some people moonlight, and for some it's their day job.
Everyone has their own unique interest. My desire is to show the public, and especially journalists, where the seam between publicly available information and the unknown exists. I have the impression most people don't know how much is at their fingertips in 2022.
The sort of analysis that would previously only be accessible to the intelligence community can be assembled by ordinary citizens with no military-specific training, just access to the right tools (Google Docs, Earth), and publicly available data.
π¦πΊ Assessment of Royal Australian Air Force aircraft readiness (some of them anyway), extrapolating from their Mode-S transponder RF emissions, compiled 2022-07-03.
Aircraft that haven't flown in over a month are believed to be (temporarily?) out of service. #RAAF
π¨π¦ I'm using the same methodology as the #RCAF assessments I've published.
In comparison, please notice it's completely normal to have some (small) number of aircraft out of the pool for maintenance, almost all the time, for almost all aircraft.
Some of the identified aircraft haven't yet been delivered to the RAAF, so they're not actually *out* of service, they haven't yet come *into* service - I didn't want to make a new category, so I just recycled "out of service". Apologies for any confusion.
Thankfully the Cormorant Mid-Life Upgrade is underway, scheduled to be completely finished by 2028, but they haven't awarded the contract yet...
I thought it was Leonardo that couldn't follow basic instructions and misconfigured almost all their transponders in the #RCAF CH-149 Cormorant fleet, but that's none of my business, I could be wrong, and I haven't seen that investigation the RCAF promised either. π€·ββοΈ