Concurrent to this posting there is a Spy plane circling Katy Texas (30 miles west of Houston) at 12,600 ft. It is not using ADS-B but I'm picking it up by MLAT. The flight ident is MYSTC61 (ADFE48). It is doing a right hand circle retracing its path. Circle diameter is about 8nm. Aircraft type is unknown.
Found more information. The airplane is a Beechcraft C-12. I found this on the net from late January of this year: https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/sticky-thread-for-mid-atlantic-milair-2020.399294/page-11 Some interesting activity in the DC area tonight. Local reports of lots of Blackhawks flying around Alexandria. At the same time MYSTIC61 C-12 with hex ADFE48 has been circling the area at 12,500ft for several hours. I heard a pilot tell DCA tower that he'd rather not discuss what they're doing. That makes this a military version of a twin-engined Beechcraft King Air. He is also circling the Katy/Sugar land area but slightly higher at 12,600 feet
Hi Strat-o ADFE48 = 94-00316 C-12R+ May have upgraded to V variant.Said aircraft did have nose art. Check out google. Would post pic, but gotta watch copyrights. Regards Keith
Thanks Keithdr. Do you have a link to the image by chance? I have seen all of the sister ships and they have bulges on the top and bottom. Also behind the bottom bulge is an L3 Westcam. Looks like this plane is putting in a full seven day work week circling the same point many days in a row at 12,300 - 12,600 for about four hours at a stretch. If they run out of fuel they can easily glide to their temporary home base of KSGR.
These are bound to be C-12 Hurons, many of which are operated by the military and DHS. There are a lot of C-12 variants, but the one you described sounds like one that was stalking me 2 1/2 years ago. If you want to see a photo of the plane I'm talking about, here it is. Originally, this was a standard private aviation Super King Air 350. It looked like a typical Super King Air 350. Not long thereafter its tail # was change, and after that it was changed back to N65FM, its original tail #. After some research, I'm personally convinced this model can probably 3-D image the interior of any building...and a whole lot more. It is owned by DHS. So a normal King Air 350 was converted into this aircraft. The DHS is up to a lot of things Americans would not believe nor condone:
