At last...someone who enjoys watching airplanes in the sky!

A far cry from some of the whiners & complainers from an earlier thread complaining about passenger planes flying overhead.

Well, I am a whiner, as you put it. I don't like whining either, so in fact, we are planning to move once our kids are out of school, as the congestion and noise that has gotten so much worse here is not for us, and we'd like to once again enjoy the sounds of birdsong and rainy days without the constant roaring overhead. But since we are planted here for the next six years or so, I am interested in seeing the tracks to help me understand if it's not as bad as I think it is. For example, just now, several flights at 3000 feet passed overhead, on their way to SJC (and one from Tokyo into SFO closer to 4000). But maybe I am only remembering the noisy times, and it's not as bad as I seem to think it is. Visual records of tracks would help me to assess that.

It is quite obvious that the Palo Alto airplane noise complainers have never served on an USN aircraft carrier or even at the airport.

Yet most of them have no gripes when flying off to Maui.

I grew up in Viet Nam during the 'American War'. Phantoms and Corsairs flew overhead nearly every hour dropping incendiary ordinance. We were scared but we did not complain. There was no one to complain to.

Palo Alto is the land of the 'soft life' where nearly everything is affordable & easy to acquire.

That is why so many Chinese from the People's Republic have chosen to move here. They see America as a very wasteful country caught up in its own petty world of materialism & they want a piece of the action as well.

It sure seems pretty hopeless sometimes for those of us under the flight paths.

The city government is so inept it can’t handle planning or infrastructure needs, or even execute previously generated plans. It’s nowhere near being able to handle something tricky and political like this. Just no clout.

And there is the constant attempt to invalidate complaints by someone or someones.

I still don’t see what that’s about. What’s the long game?

> I grew up in Viet Nam during the 'American War'. Phantoms and Corsairs flew overhead nearly every hour dropping incendiary ordinance. We were scared but we did not complain. There was no one to complain to.

I for one can understand your childhood fears Nguyen. I flew a Cobra gunship in Nam...the kind Robert Duval flew in Apocalypse Now with that classic line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning.".

People around here complain about a jetliner flying 2,000 feet overhead. Well imagine 25+ armed helicopters with Gatling guns & rocket launchers flying DIRECTLY overhead & discharging their ordinance.

My neighbor sometimes complains about the noise from a single helicopter flying above his house & while they are loud, one helicopter is nothing.

Palo Alto is the 'land of the soft' as you succinctly put it.

Many can't even handle the ambient sounds from Shoreline during the summer months.

@Yeah -- you ask, "What's the long game?"

Good question. You have to admit that "It's not as bad as a war zone" puts a new spin on it, though.

I can see some merit to "Shut up and be grateful for what you have", if applied consistently. But why is it that the Stoics emerge only when we talk about plane noise? Not to mention that complaining about people complaining seems decidedly un-Stoic...

Comparing Palo Alto aircraft noise to war time Vietnam might not be the most appropriate comparison. How about comparing Palo Alto to San Francisco where there is little to no noise from aircraft bound for the very profitable San Francisco owned and operated SFO?

@Overhead noise,

"why is it that the Stoics emerge only when we talk about plane noise?"

Aviation folk react in a threatened manner at any mention of plane noise, they are quick to post on these threads to shame or insult people who complain about plane noise.

The Weekly moderators don't do a very good job, so the stoics "win."

I NEVER hear jetliners overhead. All I see are vapor trails & even the low-flying ones on approach are silent.

Low-elevation propeller planes are far noisier.

@Very -- I believe you. Why wouldn't I? That is why I am asking to see track records. My understanding is that there are fairly narrow bands where the planes fly. It is very possible they aren't over your house. But there are many, many over our area. I see them all on flightradar.

It's true that we like to have our windows open in the spring and at other times, such as when it rains. I expect that closed windows would block some of the noise, though the big 3000-footers and the whiny 4000-footers are pretty hard to miss. The SJC flights when it rains, at 2000 feet -- they shake the house. Should we have to close our windows in the spring because of the overhead noise every two minutes? Right now I hear the low roar of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner from China at 5500 feet. Not too bad as far as the planes go, but still a steady stream of that exists where it didn't before.

It turns out that flightradar will provide historic information of flights over an area for about $1000 per week's worth of data. I wonder if the City would be interested in purchasing the data for a few weeks (at different times of year) and opening it up to the public. That way we could have a more objective discussion. We could find out where the low-flying flights go, whether flights are evenly dispersed, how early or late they come, how frequent they are over certain areas, etc.

Overhead Noise,

Sky Posse submitted a FOIA request and received three dimensional flight data from SFO/FAA for every aircraft going into and out of SFO for for the past decade. A summary of that data, and trends in flight path locations and altitudes, was submitted to the Palo Alto city council and city staff. The data is available from Sky Posse if you know how to process it.

Also try the Webtrak5 flight tracker Web Link

The data needs to be current. We are getting far more jets from Asia now, as well as more SJC overflights. Just this evening, since 10pm, on a very fair day, about 15 flights have passed overhead at about 2500 feet heading to SJC. Several after 11pm. This didn't happen even six months ago. They make the jet from Kona that just passed overhead at 4500 feet seem downright quiet. This is just outrageous.