Photo: Chris Chambers

Scanners

Some people swear by them, others never use them, but personally I never go out on a low-level photography trip without one. I’m talking about a scanner, something that can be an invaluable piece of equipment, or quite simply an absolute waste if time!

It really depends on your location and what you might expect as the predominant traffic in the area as to whether having a scanner is worth your while or not. For instance, nobody will argue that the majority of traffic through the Mach Loop will be Hawks from RAF Valley, but also the Military Training Area (MTA) which exists above Low Fly Area (LFA) 7 is also home to a large amount of Air Combat training by the same aircraft. For this reason having all the RAF Valley Hawk air to air frequencies in your scanner is only going to get very tedious if you are hoping to hear low-level traffic, as, especially on a busy day, all you are going to hear is the constant traffic up above you. Not only do you start thinking that all the Hawks are doing high-level work that day, but the longer the scanner is occupied by high-level activity, the more chance you have of the scanner missing other traffic that may be heading your way low-level.

So when is it worth your while? Well this has a lot to do with how the aircraft route to the LFAs and how many aircraft are in a flight, oh and having the right frequencies of course! As somebody who frequents LFAs 7 and 17 my experience is drawn from these areas.

Keeping with LFA 7 and the Hawks from RAF Valley, there are two ways that you are likely to catch these at low-level. They are either going to depart from Valley and route low-level directly into LFA 7, or they are going to depart high-level to a point maybe in South Wales or the Wales/West Midlands border etc. where they will get a low-level let down to route back towards Valley. For anything routing straight into the LFA your only chance of catching them on the scanner before you see them is if there are two or more and you can hear them on an air to air frequency first, but as I’ve already mentioned, the Hawk air to air’s can be more trouble than they’re worth. For anything routing out of Valley high-level, these will be handed off to Swanick Military control (Swanick Mil) where they transit to their low-level let down point. If you can track them at high-level and follow any frequency changes, then you are likely to hear where they are going to go low-level and this may give you an idea as to whether they are likely to route back past your location or not. The procedure for departing directly into an LFA is common for any Base in the UK that is within or close to an LFA, where they can depart low-level and stay like that for the duration of the flight.

Valley Hawks cause constant chatter when in LFA7. Many photographers place these in a separate bank in your scanner. Alpha Jets are rarely heard on the scanner before appearing low level. Tornados from Marham and Lossie will almost always be heard on the airways before descending low level.

Staying low-level straight out of Base is all well and good, but what about when something based on the other side of the UK wants to go low-level in LFA 7 and needs to cross a large amount of controlled airspace to get there? A good example of this would be an F-15 from RAF Lakenheath. As regular visitors to LFA 7 the Lakenheath Eagles always follow a similar pattern. Upon departure from Lakenheath they will contact Swanick Mil East and then transit west at medium/high-level towards one of the corridors that cross the very busy civil airways. There are three main corridors, the Lichfield, Daventry and Westcott (aircraft entering North Wales will also need to transit through the Niton corridor to the west of the Lichfield). By far the busiest of these corridors is the Lichfield and if you are at a location in the Mach Loop you should be able to hear aircraft on the Lichfield Corridor frequency (256.575), as they head towards it from the east. Once you have contact with such an aircraft then you can get some very valuable information from it. Firstly you should very quickly discover how many aircraft are in the flight. Secondly and more importantly, as they cross the corridor the controller will ask the aircraft to state their intentions once clear of the corridor. The F-15’s will usually answer with “let-down for low-fly area 7”, but if you keep track of them you can expect to get more info out of them once they are ready to enter low-level. Once clear of the corridor they will either get a let-down with RAF Shawbury or maybe RAF Valley, or they will go en-route, depending on the weather conditions and visibility. As they enter low-level they will then call up on the NATO Low Fly frequency (278.000) and give a run down of their intentions while in the LFA, including height, direction and duration of their low-level sortie. Again, very valuable information if you are in a location that may offer the opportunity to photograph one of these aircraft in a valley. Of course once at low-level they have no contact with any controller and the only way you can keep track of them is if there is more than one, in which case you need the air-to-air frequencies for those aircraft, more of that later. When they have completed their sortie they will pull out of low-level and contact Swanick Mil either on a pre-determined frequency, or the area Initial Contact Frequency (ICF) for their transit back to Lakenheath, usually following the same route back east that they came west on.

This procedure is typical for any aircraft wanting to route into LFA 7 from a base on the Eastern side of the UK, but it is worth remembering that UHF/VHF radio signals can only be received in line of sight with the transmitter, so it is very likely that you won’t hear things coming if for instance they have routed into South Wales and then routed north at low-level, something which is common for aircraft based at Boscombe Down for example. In fact once aircraft are at low-level in valleys you are going to struggle to hear them at all unless they are reasonably close to you.

Due to its location LFA 17 is slightly different, as it is a lot easier for aircraft to route there directly at low-level. The proximity of BAE Warton makes it ideal for their aircraft to use and with RAF Leeming and RAF Linton-on-Ouse not so far away (areas which are known let-downs points) it is highly possible that you could see many aircraft within LFA 17 yet not hear anything of them on Swanick Mil. While aircraft will transit for a let-down with Warton at Morecambe Bay, it is also common for them to go low-level to the east of the UK in the adjoining LFA’s of 11 or 12 and then route west into LFA 17. An example of this would be Tornado’s out of Marham, which would commonly do one of three things. Firstly they could transit through the Lichfield Corridor as though they were heading for LFA 7 and then turn north before eventually routing to Fleetwood to drop down to low-level at Morecambe Bay. This will be the only way that you could get a heads-up from the scanner that they are heading for LFA 17, as they will be up on Swanick Mil before going en-route or contacting Warton for a let-down. Another routing they could take would be to transit north up the east coast and drop low-level in the Leeming area before heading west into LFA 17. Similarly they could depart Marham and route the same way, but at low-level for the duration. With either of the latter two routings the only way that you might hear them on the scanner before seeing them would be if there is more than one aircraft and they are using an air-air frequency.

It is these air-air frequencies that can be of some use to low-level photographers, although some people will argue against that. As previously mentioned, once aircraft are low in the valleys it becomes difficult to hear them on a scanner due to the hills hiding the signal, but with the right frequencies and assuming that there is more than one aircraft in a flight, it is possible to keep some sort of track of aircraft within the LFAs, although it shouldn’t be expected that you will hear all aircraft coming your way. A lot depends on your chosen valley and the area surrounding it. If it is deep within the surrounding hills then depending on the aircraft height you won’t hear them until they are very close to you. If however there is less in the way of surrounding hills and more open space on approach to the valley (M6 Pass is an example), then you may well hear things much further away. It shouldn’t be assumed that flights are using an air-air frequency either, as they may be following a radio silence procedure, so in the case of LFA 17 you could have a pair of Tornado’s pass you yet never once hear them on a scanner either coming or going. You will very often hear air-air’s being used by aircraft at high or medium level, but you can usually figure out by listening to the conversation whether they are in transit, doing some sort of high level work or if they are likely to drop down into low-level.

So it is up to the individual to decide whether having a scanner at low-level is of any use to them or not. A lot of people have them simply to see what is around on the day, then you have those that argue that it doesn’t matter what comes on the scanner, once you are at your chosen location you are either going to see things or you’re not. You are definitely going to have days when the scanner never stops yet very little passes you and of course the opposite when there is little activity on the scanner but lots of low-level traffic. Quite simply it is just as unpredictable as low-level photography itself!

 

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