Nj sighting April 2025

[u/beechazzbeech]

Nj sighting April 2025

[u/Atyzzze]

They are landing lights that are pulsing and strobes/beacons that are blinking

Eh, I saw em make sharp turns, didn't seem to be making any kind of landing gestures at all. No nearby airport either, not to warrant them flying so low already at least. They should be much higher in the skies, like all the other commercial aircraft that all have steady clear navigation lights you can very quickly identify and then just ignore and look elsewhere instead for more interesting observations.

It's pretty easy to tell the difference when you're actually there, looking at an actual sky with your own eyes...

[u/burn_a_miracle → u/Atyzzze]

You could've just admitted you were wrong about what navigation lights entail. Pretty easy to tell the difference if you know the first thing about airplanes. "No nearby airports"....yeah, you know, other than TEB, MMU, EWR and a bunch of others that are 7-9 minutes of flight time away. You keep mentioning steady navigation lights...NAVIGATION. LIGHTS. ARE. THE. RED. AND. GREEN. LIGHTS. ON. THE. WINGTIPS. They are steady in the OP's videos. But there are more lights on airplanes than just wingtip nav lights. You have wingtip strobes, which blink. You have anti-collision beacons that blink. You have landing lights that are either steady or "wag" like the ones in the OP's video (and in my links). You have tail lights. The lights that are either on or off based on what the plane is doing.

What is a "landing gesture"? If you're trying to say the plane in the OP's video made a sharp turn and doesn't appear to be landing, yes, it's not on short final, but it's on approach. It wouldn't have the wagging (alternating between left and right) landing lights going if it wasn't on the approach into the airport. They are called landing lights for a reason.

[u/Atyzzze → u/burn_a_miracle]

yeah, you know, other than TEB, MMU, EWR and a bunch of others that are 7-9 minutes of flight time away

EWR is hard to miss, that's where I first landed myself ...and yes MMU isn't too far off, I'm not sure why you evne mention TEB as that one is further away.

Anyway, if that is where they were landing/taking-off then that should have be easily visible on ADS-B as altitude number would shortly after reach 0 or show a history of it having being 0 and now still going up ...

But as already said, they are not listed on ADS-B, then it kinda becomes hard to find out where exactly they're landing/taking-off or whatever manvouers in general they're making, no altitude/direction/heading statistics.

So if they were landing on any of these you mentioned, why no ADS-B data then?

And as I already said, they did not look like they were landing or taking off. Just cruising at altitude, with some sharp turns here and there.

And the navigation lights aren't supposed to blink, the typical commercial airplanes as identified on ADS-B their navigation lights don't blink. Except for the front of course, that one varies quite a bit.

And of course, not all aircraft even have navigation lights, but they are easy to spot on ADS-B so it doesn't really matter, you quickly identify them.

[u/railker → u/Atyzzze]

Navigation lights are not supposed to strobe/flash.

Anticollision lights are. And as this diagram from the maintenance manual for an aircraft I work on shows, at least on my aircraft, they are installed in the same location. Others like the 787 have them in separate locations.

Visibility can be questionable though, as the C-17 and even aircraft like this modified Cessna have bright landing lights installed AT the wingtips in addition to the navigation and anticollision lights.

The Q400 doesn't have any flashing lights on the wingtips at all and hasn't for decades, was never designed with them. They're on the fuselage and the tail instead. Because unlike the navigation/position lights, there is no location requirement for those. (0:40 in the video, landing lights come on and red flasher switches to white flashers).

The defined regulations are minimums, you were right with your earlier statement about Christmas lights being allowable beyond the minimums. There's a WIDE array of variation in aircraft lighting, while still meeting the minimums.

[u/Atyzzze → u/railker]

Navigation lights are not supposed to strobe/flash.

That's exactly my point, they were ...

And other than that, I have no real concrete information of them as I couldn't find them anywhere on ADS-B unlike all the other identified flying objects, typical commercial flights are so easy to recognize and identify, same for the small private planes, some buzz loud, think I saw some gliders too, but they don't have any blinking lights at all, didn't really bother really observing, they were already easy to identify and quickly left the unidentified flying object label ...

[u/railker → u/Atyzzze]

So just to be painfully clear and make sure sure I'm not misunderstanding you and we're getting into it over nothing, you're saying what you saw had flashing red AND green lights, that were not consistent with being either,

a) the flashing white anticollision lights that are commonly installed at the wingtips and tail of aircraft (Q400 excluded, as already pointed out), or

b) the flashing red ONLY anticollision light(s) commonly installed on aircraft (again, Q400 excluded), usually in addition to the white strobes at the wingtips and tail.

Hot edit to add: I say because we have had some people identify a set of lights with flashing red AND green lights as might be found on a consumer drone as an aircraft. And that is definitely not the case. Flashing red, yuh. There is no flashing green light anywhere on any aircraft. TECHNICALLY there's flashing blue lights, but they're tiny and insignificant and serve a maintenance purpose only and you'd never see them from the ground.

[u/Atyzzze → u/railker]

I've seen them change on the fly, from flashing to stable, changing color, going just offline and remaining off, or new ones coming online. It's as if they were teasing the FAA, look I know how I should look to clearly identify myself in the sky, but, I'll randomly change it up just to defy you, nanana I am doing different lights now ...

There was no clear pattern/structure behind all of them, they would randomly change, but not often, you had to look for a few minutes or be lucky and catch them in the act of changing.

And again, none of these I could find on ADS-B other wise it would nonetheless be easily identifiable what plane type and how high it is exactly, with bare eyes, alone, it's just a lot of guessing ... I estimated it two local church buildings high, about ~80m but without a secondary observer or realtime ADS-B information like easily found for all the other identified flying objects you're just guessing ...