Prop-Powered Surveillance Aircraft Over London

Looking for an intelligent guess or assumption,

Am sitting out in my garden and have just been overflown twice by what I presume to be a small observation or surveillance plane.

I live in North-West London and have been used recently to seeing Merlins and Sea Kings flying over, either for the Olympics or the nearby Nato Hq. What I haven't seen before is a single prop-engined aircraft, with a searchlight on the centre of the fusalage with three safety lamps in the corners.

Does anyone have any idea what model of plane it might be, or which service could be flying it?

Jensy

reply to post by jensy


Get some pics?

Thanks or posting.

I live in Washington, US. I recently watched a black hawk helicopter make north/south sweeps through my valley. Tried to capture it on video but by the time I got it out the cupped was a dot in the screen.

My suggestion is to have the camera ready for next time.

Thousand words and all

Cheers

The searchlight on the fuselage sounds like a landing light, maybe just a private plane coming in to land?

EDIT: Possibly an emergency landing if it made two passes? or a botched landing and they have had to try again.

reply to post by jensy


google pc-12/u-28, or perhaps pa-46

Had my android with 5mpx, but it is pretty much pitch black at this time and at best it would give a faint shadow of the wings. I reckon it was probably a PC-12 shaped and sized fuselage, but I don't know of any UK user.

I do live close to Elstree airstrip, but they don't have a manned tower at night. Other than that, Heathrow and RAF Northolt are closest.

Jensy

It may have been someone flying in from outside the UK. The PC-12 is a pretty popular aircraft. As of June 2010, there were over 1000 flying. That was two years ago, so there are probably quite a few more out there.

If the tower isn't monitored at night, they'll go to a system where the pilots control themselves. They'll make a "blind" radio call that they are on approach, or what part of the approach they are in, to let anyone else in the area know there is another aircraft in the area.

I used to be involved in glider ops in Hawaii, and it would go something like this.....

"Dillingham in the blind, CAP hangar. Truck tow in progress left side of runway . Truck beginning tow."

That would let anyone who couldn't see the runway that we were using a truck to tow a glider into the air beside the runway, so they would be on the lookout for it.

do yo have a UTC time when it happened?