Lazing on a small Greek island I spied a rare 4-engine turboprop above heading North.
FlightRadar confirmed it was an EP-3 Aries of the US Navy, originating from a larger Greek island further south but destination unknown, intrigued I followed it through the day as it headed up to the Black sea and race-tracked around off the coast of the Ukraine...relieved when it finally headed home
Looked out on following days, never lucky enough to eyeball anything but followed a variety of aircraft through the same area on their long missions - KC135 tanker, RC-135 Rivet Joint, P-8 Poseidons, Challenger 600 (maybe Artemis) and finally another EP-3 (is it their weekly slot perhaps?), it gets to be compulsive...
EDIT: The EP-3 and Challenger 600 that are up there now are the 3rd and 7th most tracked aircraft on FlightRadar right now.
An interesting article explains things much better than I could
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...around-ukraine
Some of the missions have been intercepted by SU-27s, with missiles fired against a RAF RC-135, thankfully without result!
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...-launch-report
Trying to recreate some of these missions in MSFS:
Steve Dra has done some P-8 lookalike repaints for the PMDG Boeing 73x - good if you have the PMDG
Flightsim.to has both an EP-3 and a KC-135 though both are P3D imports, well done but using the Boeing 747 cockpit.
This works OK for the KC-135, which has been upgraded to a digital cockpit in R/L - except you are sitting much higher than a 707 pilot would have been!
But for me the P-3 doesn't work - only partial instruments and engines not connected to the throttles so unflyable.
I've tried swapping in a different cockpit, it's just an Alias statement but the aircraft is no longer selectable to fly so obviously not just that...
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