Has anyone seen anything like this before? This is actually exactly how I've imagined Google Maps gets the imagery for its 3D virtual Earth feature. But I'm sure other companies might be doing stuff like this too. https://imgur.com/mqZu3qY
Yes, i see this regularly above the Netherlands. It definitely is mapping (shooting photo's). I've looked up the callsigns of the aircrafts in the past, en they all belong to company's with bussines as cartography, GPS and similar.
Interesting to hear. Yeah I looked up the registration and it's cool to find out about the company that owns it. I just wish I knew who their customer is! I always wanted to know more about how Google does its 3D mapping. I actually expected that they'd have at least two aircraft flying in formation, so it'd be very interesting to find out if they actually do it with one instead.
https://www.fugro.com/ It could be anything. Look up their site. From cartographical info mining to scanning a site before building some oil piping, they do very various things...
Here's a weird one we've been seeing lately above Portland, Oregon. It always flies this diagonal path, we've seen it flying a vee-shaped path (eg two diagonals). It doesn't seem to be the correct pattern for 'satellite view', nor is it the looping that is seen related to protests and Stingray monitoring.
Yep. Similar stuff over Los Angeles, both civilian and military here. According to the FAA N Number lookup the plane is registered to FUGRO USA LAND INC.
