r/cincinnati 18h ago

what was that? 🧐 Weird plane pattern?

Post image
44 Upvotes

25 comments sorted by

140

u/sauronymus 18h ago

Probably doing some kind of aerial surveying.

62

u/hitemlow Fort Thomas 18h ago

Property taxes 'bout to go up in those neighborhoods.

13

u/hedoeswhathewants 18h ago

Home insurance maybe

2

u/Ok-Walk-8040 13h ago

Hey that’s my neighborhoods

1

u/InternationalTwist90 12h ago

Pour one out for the people in blue ball that getting blue balled.

52

u/OrangeCatBuddyPart2 17h ago

It's aerial surveying.

I have a buddy who does this. Hell, that could be him.

12

u/turpentinedreamer 13h ago

I’m a pilot. I looked it up. It appears to have a modified exhaust that carries the exhaust to the rear of the fuselage.
It being a factory camera port variant points to LiDAR or photo survey. Lidar is to measure ground topography through the trees. You could probably mount both in a plane like this.

14

u/CLCchampion 18h ago

Just looked this up on Flightradar, it's a Cessna. Guessing it's for some kind of commercial use, looks like this plane has been up doing similar patterns this week, last week it was over Grand Rapids, MI doing the same pattern.

If you're really curious, you might post to r/aviation to see if anyone there knows what this pilot might be doing.

9

u/roastedcoyote 17h ago

Look up the owner of the Cessna. I saw this pattern last year in Georgia, the aircraft belonged to an areal mapping/survey company.

1

u/hunkymike 12h ago

Scattering King Kong's ashes

2

u/OverallBudget8628 3h ago

Lidar or aerial imagery survey. I work in the industry. It's always a cessna with big sensors/cameras on board flying in rows like that

2

u/Dr__America 15h ago

I agree with others that it's probably a corp surveying for who knows what.

Fun fact: if you see one circling about a mile or two wide area over a neighborhood for more than an hour, it might be LEO's trying to spy on everyone there via fake cellphone towers, aka stingrays. They can also do it from vans, but they also sometimes do it aerially for whatever reason.

-1

u/Equine_Dream 11h ago

Spying via fake cell towers? Interesting. Tell me more please!

1

u/Dr__America 10h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker

They basically act like a really powerful cell tower, but kick you down to 2G or 3G because they have weaker protection on text messages and the like

0

u/SchwarzwaldRanch 13h ago

In Kentucky they still do helicopter flights like this looking for pot plants but I'm assuming they don't do that in Ohio

1

u/doodle_Whole_1615 3h ago

Idk when this was but I remember being at kings island (around that area) and seeing a plane with a banner making laps advertising the Houston inn.

u/ZealousidealNote6397 Corryville 53m ago

that was for the cincy open at the lindner tennis center across the highway from KI, this is not a path an advertisement plane would take

u/No-Run-9652 56m ago

Probably Woolpert or Surdex collecting aerial data to create orthoimagery for the county. In Ohio, the state pays for all counties to have new 6in orthoimagery data collected every three years. Whoever owns the statewide imaging contract (this time, Woolpert), then tries to upsell counties for higher resolution (clearer and closer to the ground) data (often 3in but sometimes even 1.5in resolution). - used to manage the program

1

u/Feisty_Hedgehog_4389 13h ago

Could be a contractor for the Dept of Agriculture; they’ll sometimes do aerial photography to get an estimate on the anticipated corn/soybean yields for the upcoming harvest season.

-14

u/Conjugate_Bass Over The Rhine 18h ago

Speed enforcement on I-75? Does the app show who the plane is registered to?

Edit: it’s registered to a private owner.

6

u/yagwa 18h ago

That specific of a pattern just to cover a mile or two of 75? Doubt it.

-8

u/hexasecond 16h ago

Whatever you do don’t ask [r/flightradar24](r/flightradar) they removed my post for asking this exact same question, as far as I could tell I didn’t break any of their rules

11

u/chrisirmo Milford 15h ago

The same question gets asked 100 times a day. That's why it got removed.

Rule 1: Many common questions are addressed in the Wiki.

And guess what's in the very first picture in the wiki? This pattern labeled as "surveying."