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There, the people of Kingston take solace in their shared befuddlement. Why do they hear the plane on the weekends and at 3 a.m.? Why, last Wednesday night, did it buzz for nearly four hours in the vicinity of Purvis’ home north of downtown? Whose plane is it, they ask, and what in the world is the pilot up to?

“I would love to know what it is,” Purvis said. “I’ve never heard anything like this before.”

Those questions have gone unanswered all month long, mostly because no authority has stepped forward to claim ownership of the plane or to share any insight about its assignment. Amid that void, amateur sleuths trying to crack the mystery can only go off impassioned firsthand descriptions of the din, which can be contradictory or short on crucial details.

“The commonality seems to be that the aircraft has a high-pitched motor sound. Not a jet — definitely some kind of propeller plane,” said Steffan Watkins, an IT security consultant from rural Ottawa who tracks military planes and ships in his spare time. Some witnesses are certain the plane has only one engine. Others swear it has two.

“If, at least, we knew what (type of) plane it was or what organization it was, we could guess,” said Watkins, who has spent, by his admission, “too many hours” trying to identify the plane after a Kingston couple messaged him about the case a week ago.