Plane spotting an A380 from 200 miles away

I recall my next door neighbour, an air traffic controller in Shannon, telling me he watched the lights of a high altitude aircraft going overhead Shannon on a frosty clear night and followed the lights until the jet was overhead Belfast. Probably a similar distance.

Amazing how far you can track high flying large airliners in very clear weather conditions.

Sitting in my garden on a clear overheard sky in the border counties I note the extraordinary frequency of overhead planes some actually at 15 minutes intervals. What is actually interesting is that some planes have variations of speed and height, noise levels etc. as they penetrate through the sky I take it these flight paths are planes to and from our USA neighbours into Europe. Will Flightradar assist in determining more data on them.

Does the Space Shuttle in orbit count as a plane 😉

Spotted a plane 1 clear winters morning as the sun was rising. With the orange sky and the contrails I could see a plane making a turn. Checked it out on Flightradar and it was just passing over the coast in South Wales. I was on highish ground at the time.I measured it out on google earth and from my location in Longford it measured 250km's give or take a few km's