Anyone know why I pick up this Call Sign COPPER on my aircraft scanner? I stay in Jamaica and have noticed 5-8 of these aircraft all contacting the tower at the same time with the call sign prefix of COPPER for example they radio and say:Kingston good morning this is COPPER 899 with you at 36,0COPPER 899 Radar Service Terminated contact Havana Radar / Center on 125.500is this really a Military Aircraft? I thought the 494th Fighter Squadron used this call sign? if so why over the airspace of Jamaica?any info would be appreciated thanks
Any Part 135 or 121 outfit can apply for a callsign which makes keeping track of their aircraft easier for the dispatchers, also easier for the pilots to keep track of either trips.. or themselves. Some places assign the call number to the pilot... at the factory the chief pilot was Merlin 1, and the asst chief pilot was Merlin 2, and the next guy was Merlin 3, so no matter what plane you hopped into... you knew your callsign and it stayed with you. At a charter/freight/air carrier/ you would have your callsign and a flight number which is usually 3 digit for 121 and 4 digit for 135, but that is not always the case, they fluctuate. As to hearing military aircraft... unless your scanner is picking up UHF... I doubt that would be the case, because rarely do military a/c use VHF radios... and in fact only for communicating with towers that don't have UHF. If you hear them ask... Do you have a uniform freq that is their way of asking for a UHF channel... you will hear the answer either negative or... Tune to channel XX whatever the case may be. More likely than not, the Copper callsign belongs to a company which has multiple a/c flying who knows what.
Copper is the 494th Fighter Squadron flying F-15E Strike Eagle's. They are the only American FS based in England. With the aircraft checking in at Flight Level 3 6 0, it looks like they were just flying over and really high. With 5 to 8 of them it looks like they might have been doing training or going to or coming back from a mission.
