I dug into this a couple weeks ago in another post, copied verbatim below here. The upshot is... If I had to guess, they're scanning to map the aquatic ecosystems in the canals and along the coast. They used to do this visually by regular photography, airplanes overhead, comparing the current to the prior. If anyone was caught, for example, trimming mangroves back large fines were incurred. Because these areas tend to be in busy flight paths, I imagine they're using new technology that can accomplish the pictures in the evening when most flights are barred. Just my educated guess. There's always the possibility of nefarious intentions, but I think that's of a lesser probability.

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The post from a couple weeks ago --

https://greatawakening.win/p/17shvo1FkV/breaking-private-planes-in-flori/

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Digging. Planefags will enjoy the dive. ...

Apparently they did the same to Manatee-Sarasota counties, also west coast of Florida, four months ago.

"... projectfusionxa • 4mo ago Thank you for this post. Although it's a year later the company with a plane just like this is now doing same circle route over Manatee/Sarasota County Florida. Has been going over my home since 6am with a nice green laser that shines down. Figured it was something like this so appreciate all the information ..."

https://www.reddit.com/r/flightradar24/comments/u59zc2/off_the_florida_coast_holy_loops_im_relatively/

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This Randigo LLC (which owns several aircraft that are allegedly used by a skydiving firm) is also associated with aerial surveying.

From Reddit user bobzor. -- **"... The owner, Randigo, is an aerial survey company. From a link I found:

Our entities Randigo LLC, Revolution Flight LLC, and MakeSafe LLC brought in over $12,000,000.00 in revenue in 2020 while producing our most profitable year yet. Including our on staff technical team, we employ 33 people. We operate our own fleet of Aerial Survey Planes and Part 91 Turbine Aircraft for Skydiving operations in North America. ..."**

https://aircraft-data.com/owner/randigo-llc

https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/here-is-something-a-little-different-plane-down-in-alabama.105553/

https://www.skydivealabama.com/

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Now, let's look at Revolution Flight LLC. Not much info there and so far I haven't come up with who the principals are - owners, CEO, etc.

https://www.revolutionflight.com/

https://www.surveyaircraft.com/

https://www.surveyaircraft.com/about-us

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Then there's a MakeSafe LLC out of Georgia that appears to be affiliated with support activities for air transportation. They DBA FairLifts that has an aerial survey division. They appear to use helicopters vs small craft airplanes.

https://www.fairlifts.com/

https://www.fairlifts.com/environmental-helicopter-services/aerial-surveying/

https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.make_safe_llc.34168b39e76fe8a933f7195945707429.html

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Edit: Some final thoughts. When looking into companies it's very strange to NOT find information online on the owners and upper management, even if just pleasantly-worded history, like "Bob grew up flying back in Iowa and always wanted to own a fleet of aircraft... ". I've seen this before in c_a affiliated firms so it always raises red flags.

Second, if an aerial survey was being done there should be some information available from the FAA. Something. They have to be authorized to use that flight pattern by someone in the FAA as is my understanding. Planefags can perhaps weigh in on this. According to the reporter who allegedly checked this nobody seems to know why these planes are surveying.

Thirdly, in Florida they sometimes do aerial surveying to track the health of coastal ecosystems such as ensuring that mangroves aren't being destroyed either artificially or naturally. Why they would do this at night might be to avoid heavier air traffic during daylight hours. They would not, however, be scanning inland neighborhoods.

Just my added two cents.

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Edit2: The first flight pattern map in the Reddit link is from Melbourne Florida on the east coast of the state and the airplane registration corresponds to an entry in the Randigo aircraft data link. Apparently the plane ownership of the Cape Coral instance was determined by a flight tracker as well and the described flight pattern looks similar to the Melbourne instance, shown further down in the Reddit thread.

For those who may not be familiar with the topography of Cape Coral, Florida do a simple ddg search on it and zoom in closer. It's just north of Ft Myers and a relatively small city largely surrounded by water. In addition you'll see a rather extensive network of canals throughout, behind the homes. These canals will include mangroves so I'm leaning on this being an operation to map these mangroves. I couldn't locate any information on the two individuals cited in the post news story, Casey Sutton or Philip Bertoglio(sp?), but it's likely that wherever they were in Cape Coral, there are canals nearby. I just found Philip Bertoglio (when I checked the Italian spelling) and his home backs up to a canal.