Tuesday, March 12, 2024

A black spot in the sky

 


4 comments:

  1. No shadow? How does it do that?!

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  2. They are visually tricky. The times I've seen them in flight my brain has gone "what the heck is that". Especially true if you first see it edge on.

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  3. That looks like Groom Lake. Lots of strange things happen at Groom Lake.
    37.23863019933384, -115.80939798964803

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  4. Having been overflown/near-flown by one in the wild (and looking down on it from above at the time)
    1) you don't hear it coming until it's nearly there
    2) when you do hear it, the engine noise sounds like it's going the other way
    3) for exercises, they had a T-38 chase flying several hundred feet above and behind it, slightly offset, likely because that's theonly way the E-3 flying exercise control could tell roughly where it was.

    We were building a movie set in the dry lake north of Baker, and the plane was over the mid-valley, actually below our elevation at the road. Appeared to be sneaking south to north into a Red Flag from Nellis. Hoovered in towards us obliquely, did a shallow turn northeast, and popped over a distant ridge and dropped back down. When we noticed it coming, and for its entire transit, it was at an altitude where you could have hit it with a dirt clod from a Wrist Rocket.

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