Strange plane noise?

[juneau]

I'm not clued up about airplanes like some people here so i just thought i'd post this and see what everyone thinks.

Just standing outside having a late night smoke and i heard a plane passing over above me. It was quite lower than usual, but i didn't think anything of it. Then the sound of the engines changed.... and to something i've never heard before. You'll have to bear with me for this next part.

[Engine noise]

Beeeeeeeeooooooooooooooooooo *high pitch to low pitch, getting quieter, then silence*

*three or so seconds later*

Ooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeee *low pitch to high pitch and back to sounding normal*

*few seconds later*

Beeeeeeeoooooooooooooooooooo as before

*guess what happened next?*

Ooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeee

Almost like the pilot throttled down, then up, then down, then up again.

Then........ the landing lights came on! At that point i was pretty much in a "WTH?" situation.

Is this strange behaviour?

[DennisM7]

Do you live near a military base fighters do stuff like that

[juneau]

Nope not a one. And the nearest major airport is roughly 50-60 miles away. It was definitely a passenger plane.

[TheSilentAssassin]

They do a similar thing at the Orange County Airport in California. I am not positive, but what I think this is, pilots are trying to do a noise reduction, due to populated areas of homes. So what they do, is immediately after takeoff, they throttle back to keep the noise level down until they get enough altitude. During landing, no throttle is used at all, and they turn on thier landing lights on after they have cleared the civilian area. Again I am not sure, but this might be what they are doing.

[TheDeadMeat]

I think this is, pilots are trying to do a noise reduction, due to populated areas of homes.

Sounds good to me. Called "Noise Abatement" Had a whole friggin year in my Airport Plan and Design class learning why people that live near the airport get mad when they hear the airplanes. There is one bad spot here that during the day you take some really crappy turns and climb when you leave runway 31.

OR

Some newbie student pilot getting some night flight time and keeps yanking the throttle like a 12 year old in the bathroom with a Victoria's Secret catalog

[juneau]

Plane noise is never an issue here in Stoke. I live far enough away from the two closest airport for planes to be still at a quite high altitude. The only reason that i even batted an eyelid last night was the weird noise.

Any idea what the landing lights were about?

[CheebaNinja]

They didnt come on till he got right on top of it prolly means they werent expecting him.By the sounds of it he prolly had to land there and couldnt see very good hence the throttling.Do jets usally land there?

[juneau]

They didnt come on till he got right on top of it prolly means they werent expecting him.By the sounds of it he prolly had to land there and couldnt see very good hence the throttling.Do jets usally land there?

Don't quite follow you there Cheeba.

Our closest major airport is Manchester.



I live roughly where the "o" in Nottingham is. Perfectly clear skies last night so i doubt visibility was an option. Maybe the pilot was drunk.

[TheDeadMeat]

Another possible since you don't live that close to a major airport is a soft field landing. Those types of landings can be tricky at night even for a seasoned pilot. You make your approach with full flaps and that tends to make you use your throttle more than usual. Did that once and liked to have crapped in my pants even though the field was clear and had a couple of markers. Lucky for me I had a REAL pilot with me who knew what he was doing.

[Alley_Viper]

The only time I really worried about noises coming from a plane is if I was in said plane at the time those noises were happening.

[Duke{CLR}]

Well it could have been someone practicing off field landings. It could have been a real emergency but without hearing it or knowing what kind of airplane it's hard to tell.

If the pilot was following some checklist he could have been adjusting the props and then turned the landing lights on has the checklist called for those items.

[-Bar]

Maybe the pilot was drunk.

They could have been playing Twister.