Overnight aircraft

I don't know where else to post this, but something has been annoying me for a few months now.

I go to bed very late at night and when I do, I often hear aircraft noises. This wouldn't be a problem at all because I understand that passenger jets and military training often occur at night... however the noise tends to last for up to twenty minutes or more, it seems like the aircraft are travelling very, very slowly and I often lie and listen to them and it creeps me out slightly.

I have looked into the sky but am unable to see anything strange, am I just hearing the aircraft for longer periods of time due to night-time silence or do you think it could be something else?

Where's your general location? Are you within 50 miles of a military base? How about an airport? Urban? Rural? You're not at area 51 are you? If that's the case, I would advise moving. Just a little humor.

Seriously though, is this something that is recent or have you noticed it for some time. Just curious.

Gram

Under the right conditions you can hear planes a lot farther than you realize. At night, when there's less background noise especially. What kind of plane does it sound like? Is it a jet? A propeller plane? Prop planes you hear even longer sometimes, and they'd take longer to transit the area.

In response to where my general location is, I'm in a very rural area near the coast of Scotland. I managed to snap up some photos of a tonne of jet trails and posted them here on ATS, someone suggested that there may be a military base nearby. I'm starting to figure there might be, though I need to do more research into that.

It has been frequent, but I always shrugged the noises off as passenger planes. I'm starting to research more into the kind of topics that are posted here in ATS and around the web, it may seem like I'm developing some sort of paranoia.

Zaphod58, it appears to be more of a 'drone' if that answers the question. It's not intense like a jet engine, it seems to be just a low murmer... if that describes it well enough.

Thanks for the replies.

When I was a teenager, regularly I would hear at night, around about 3am the drone of a heavy propellor driven aircraft - it was so regular and so distinct (four props, definitely, you could hear the double "beat" of them) that I used to call it "old faithful". (I'm a light sleeper/part time insomniac and so it used to wake me - moreso when I learnt to "expect" it)

I never found out what it was exactly, but I did find out that one of the bigger private freight firms used to hire a couple of Antonov An-22's and fly them out of Manchester and East Midlands airports in the UK, and that BAE used to fly Guppy's into Europe out of Warton in Lancashire and Broughton in North Wales so I suspect it was one or the other of those.

That sounds like a turboprop. If it's military it could be a C-130 or something similar. Those carry a long way, especially at night.

I would love to have a remote Hi-res video camera on top of my roof. I get planes coming into Tampa and St.Pete airports as well as McDill AFB all night but every now and then I will hear some very freaky sounding aircraft fly over very slow and it is always late, I cant get my lazy butt out of bed to look half the time.

Yesterday I was in a doctors office in town and heard a military jet coming over so I rushed outside to see what it was because it was loud and had to be something cool. With a Crystal blue sky and not a cloud in sight I could not see it. I guess it had to be a group of fighters or a lone B-1 flying low because the sound was very loud and it lasted way longer than one would expect from a plane flying low or it was just invisible with no contrail Who knows maybe some F-16s had to intercept a commercial air liner to check something fishy out. They are hard to spot high up in a real blue sky. Just wish I could have seen it.