posted 03-21-2001 10:44 AM            

not exactly sure what aircraft you were observing. how many engines did it have? were the wing mounted or fuselage mounted?

my best guess would be Virgin Atlantic as they are painted white and have bright red engines that can appear orange tinted at times. they are also well traveled up and down the east coast of the U.S.

i wouldnt put too much into the fact that one aircraft had trails and others different. this is probably explained by them being at different altitudes.

just curious, but why were you startled by the amount of traffic on the eastern seaboard? i do not know exactly where you are located but i can tell you that the eastern coast of the U.S. is one of the busiest airspaces in the entire world. do you not normally see heavy traffic from your location?

hope this helps
DD

posted 03-22-2001 11:38 AM            

without seeing photos it is hard to tell what type of aircraft you are seeing. i would imagine that the majority of aircraft that you see at high altitude have two engines as this is the prevelent configuration of modern airliners (737,757,767,a320...)

i would also caution you about making assumptions regarding white fuselages. one of the unfortunate marketing trends in aviation is the use of all white fuselages with just the name of the airline on the side. there are numerous airlines flying with this scheme.

-"Have also seen a few with orangish tail, wings, and sometimes, orange on the engines?? Weird ones. They also have just 2 wing mounted engines."

why is the "weird"? aircraft engines are painted all kinds of colors includeing orange.

"They also have just 2 wing mounted engines."
see my above comment. most airliners have just two engines nowadays

posted 03-23-2001 12:55 PM            

-"The planes weren't so weird as what they were doing and how low some of them were flying and flying in formation and breaking FAA regs."

it is these type if reports that have gotten my attention. all i am saying is that i would like to see some photos or better yet a video of these low flying aircraft spewing some substance so that it can be researched.

in all honesty, all i have seen so far is pictures of upper level trails (whether they be chem- or con-)

i am not a debunker and i do not believe that the public are stupid. sometimes the public are not educated well enough on every subject.

i am not sure if i have seen an NSA aircraft. do you have a photo of one? how do you know that it belongs to the NSA? what type of "distinct look" does it have? are they some sort of futuristic looking stealth aircraft?

you also mention FAA regs. i am just wondering how familiar you are with FAA regs and procedures and what regs were being broken.

posted 03-23-2001 01:00 PM            

i am not sure why the tone on this board has turned so sour towards me. i have clearly stated that i have come here with an open mind and concerns.

posted 03-23-2001 01:39 PM            

thanks for the clarification. i didnt understood what was being implied by the other post.

posted 03-23-2001 02:57 PM            

This photo was taken from a location two miles from the top of the hill in the background.
The top of the hill is 3011 feet. My position with the camera is at 1200’ standing on the Kerby Oregon bridge over the Illinnios River.
Notice the trails are slightly below the elevation of the top of the hill at some points and definitely not at the 35000 foot elevation that the experts say they can form. For these trails to be at 35000 feet elevation, they would have to be 50 to 60 miles in the distance. You can do the math, or you can just believe what your eyes already tell you, these are low elevation (and I might say a bit strange) trails. They should not form in the first place, and should not grow and persist either.
This is in the middle of a warm spell in May of 1999, I can tell you the temperature on top of this hill is in the 70’s.

This photo of the same trails was taken a half-hour later and 20 miles down wind.
The trails are spreading and not dissipating.

posted 03-23-2001 04:24 PM            

i have seen this photo before. the contrails are behind the hills at some distance. the distance to the hill is irrelavent. how far is the contrail from the hill? there is now one of telling. it does not touch the hill. it appears to me that these are upper level contrails with a hill in between the camera and the trail. as you know, in order to determine the altitude of the trail in question you need the other two sides of the triangle. you know the distance to the hill but not to the contrail.

posted 03-23-2001 04:28 PM            

just a follow up. the patterns can be explained by holding patterns or military training.

posted 03-23-2001 07:10 PM            

I remarked a similar thing (I think...or at least thought about holding patterns) in an e-mail to Thermit regarding the first pictures at the top of his report. Holding patterns are the most reasonable assumption, and should be ruled out first, before something more anomalous can be taken for granted. Remember, there are several different types of holding pattern entries that can leave tracks other than the typical race track pattern. You’ve got the parallel entry, the teardrop entry, and the direct entry (I wish I could find a picture of these and post them here). In addition, the pilot will also compensate for wind drift and crosswinds, and will steepen the turn on one side of the pattern and shallow it out on the other side...So what you end up with is something less than a perfect race track shape (assuming contrails or chemtrails are present to mark the flight path).

One way to rule out the possibility of holding patterns Mark Sky, (besides Flight Explorer) would be to get a sectional chart (available at any pilot's shop) for the area over which you noticed this activity. Although a sectional chart won't show you the jet routes above 18,000, it will show you where the VORs and airways are located relative to terrain features. Usually a holding pattern will occur over navaids, enroute fixes or the intersection of airways. Published holding patterns are also marked on the high altitude IFR enroute charts, which would be the most appropriate charts to look at for contrail producing altitudes...but these won’t show terrain.

It would be interesting to look for these holding pattern areas to be present on the chart in the location where you took these photos. If none of these are present, then you might be able to rule out holding patterns and have a stronger case. I do agree that these are highly unusual looking and most probably military though.

posted 03-23-2001 10:52 PM            

Hmmm.....a lot being said here. Dirk, I understand your plight. I went through it on Carnicom's site and was banned. Thermit has been a gracious host here, and the comments are (for the most part) pretty civil. Correct me if I'm wrong, Thermit, but I feel that having a pilot or two on this site to clear up any misconceptions can be a good thing. I'm not a debunker, either, but I will be quick to point out things that I know to be untrue. O.K., enough of the soapbox. Glad to have you on board, Dirk.

Just a few observations in the previous posts. First, I see that it has been implied that military aircrew do not have to follow Federal Aviation Regulations. This is untrue. We are bound by the FARs just as any other pilot operating in U.S. airspace is. As a matter of fact, our rules are frequently stricter than the FARs. On a few occasions, we can apply for a waiver through the local FAA office for such occasions as Veteran's Day flyovers, etc. We also have a few permanent waivers to the FARs. For instance, F-16s have a waiver that increases the maximum airspeed below 10,000 feet to 300 knots over 250 for civilian aircraft. This is safety-related due to the F-16 requiring a higher airspeed to retain some maneuverability over your average Cessna. A lot of other military fighter and trainer aircraft have this waiver.

The other item that I would like to discuss is Mr. Sky's pictures. These are supposed to be something out of the ordinary, but I'm not sure. Personally, I think that the "culprit" may be the F-15s from Klamath Falls. Have you checked to see if the airspace where the trails were formed is a MOA or section of Restricted Airspace set aside for military training?

I noticed that it appears like there are three, possibly four symmetric ovals that have been created in the sky. F-15s normally employ in groups of four, with three being the inevitable option if an aircraft ground aborts for maintenance.

I'll try to put this in layman's terms as best as I can, so here goes. This information is unclassified. F-15's, and most U.S. fighter aircraft, employ in a formation known as "spread four" or more commonly known as "the wall." This is when all four aircraft fly a line-abreast formation with a good distance between them. This formation is used to maximize firepower and get all the radar scopes looking in the same direction (towards the threat.) To maneuver as a "wall," the flight lead will normally call for "hook" turns, which are simultaneous 180 degree turns. Upon rolling out on the new heading, the formation should look the same as when it started, only headed the opposite direction. The F-15's will set up a racetrack (holding) pattern utilizing these "hook" turns when performing one of their primary missions, which is Defensive Counter Air (DCA.) DCA missions involve defending our own assets from airborne attackers, so the F-15s will fly in a revolving Combat Air Patrol (CAP) with the F-15s flying between the enemy and the "turf" that they are trying to protect.

F-15s normally fly at altitudes where contrails can form, but they avoid it if at all possible to keep the enemy from picking them up visually. I noticed that the trails in Mr. Sky's photos seem to only show the part of the aircraft's flight path when they were maneuvering (turning.) I think that this is a result of the increased "boundary layer separation" which is caused by increasing the angle of attack (by turning or pulling on the stick.) If you watch any footage of fighter aircraft in action, you will see that when they turn you can see the water vapor coming off of the wings (yes, I guess that Top Gun or Pensacola:Wings of Gold will suffice. Neither of these shows are accurate at all for anything else, though. ) I've made these trails, too, flying over White Sands in New Mexico. I've flown twice in the same day and seen the contrails I made two hours prior. And yes, my trails were getting the same ragged look that Mr. Sky's did.

Since the turns in the picture are an almost constant 360 degrees, I think that it was F-15's who were in the process of "hooking" away from the expected threat and were given information on some type of threat while in the turn. The flight lead then maneuvered his (or her) formation immediately through another 180 degree turn to point back toward the threat. Upon heading toward the threat, someone in the flight noticed that they were "marking" and the flight climbed or descended out of the con levels to avoid being seen.

Of course, this is all TRAINING. They were probably training against other fighter aircraft. The last time I checked, Oregon wasn't being invaded.

Why am I being so specific? This same scenario has happened to me on several occasions.

Also, you mention that for the "chemtrails" in your picture to be a 35,000 feet then they must be 50-60 miles away. Well, they could be! I flew all this week in Washington State and I could see Seattle from the northeast corner of the state. The visibility had to be at least 150 miles. So, these could be at that distance.

I've "conned" at altitudes lower than 35,000 feet. I've left long trails at just over 20,000 feet before. Also, the maneuvering of the aircraft in the picture will probably induce contrails at a lower altitude than would be the normal con level.

I don't think that the picture shows civilian holding patterns because normal holding patterns are 10-15 miles long and would look a lot more like "racetracks." If the picture did depict holding patterns, all of the aircraft making the trails would have had the same pattern to fly either at the same time or at different times over the same point. The likelihood of them all being cleared by Seattle Center to shorten the pattern to a small oval at the same point in space is unlikely.

Sorry for the long letter. I know it's getting away from the intent of this topic.

So, Mr. Sky, I've seen you show this photo several times. There may be chemtrails out there, but I'm not convinced that you've found it in these photos. My opinion is my opinion, though, and I've been wrong before.

Just some words from an old fighter pilot.

Maverick

posted 03-23-2001 11:11 PM            

By the way, If Mark Sky gets a sectional chart for the area...it will also put to rest the MOA question....since MOAs and Restricted airspace are also depicted on the sectionals.

posted 03-24-2001 12:18 AM            

When flying in the U.S.A., formation flights of military aircraft are normally treated as a single entity. To ensure the separation between this "entity" and other aircraft, we are required to maintain "standard formation." The FARs and our military regulations clearly dictate what a "standard" formation is, which is that all aircraft in a standard formation be within one mile horizontally and 200 feet vertically of each other. This is normally how we travel while under ATC control. Occasionally, such as on departures and arrivals to airfields, we will require farther spacing than one mile. If so, we will declare ourselves as a "nonstandard" formation and ATC will assign a transponder code to both ends of the formation so they know where all of the planes are. When we are not employing against a threat, we do not normally fly in the "wall" formation. It takes up a lot of airspace (reference the picture) and requires more effort to maneuver any direction other than 180 degrees. During cross-country flight as a four-ship, we will usually fly in either a "loose route" formation (sort of a wedge-shape) or an "offset box" formation (2 planes line abreast out front, two planes line abreast in the rear.) So, as long as we remain within a mile and 200 feet or ask ATC, we can fly any of a large number of formations. As a flight of 2, I'd expect to see fighters in a line-abreast formation and heavy aircraft in a "lead-trail" formation. I've never seen tankers fly in a line-abreast formation (unless that's what was flying in your pictures.)

Cy, thanks for the kind words.

To answer your question, we really only pay attention to our contrails when in a tactical environment. When traveling to and from MOAs or on cross-country flights, we'll make a mental note of it but I've never heard a flight lead ask ATC for a different altitude because of contrails.

Bombers and tankers fall into the same category as fighters. If they are over enemy territory, I would expect them to avoid conning for their own survival. With air superiority firmly in our grasp and they were orbiting over friendly territory waiting to give gas to the planes going "across the fence," I wouldn't think that they would pay a lot of attention to conning. As was the case a month ago just across the border from Iraq, I used contrails from the orbiting tankers on more than one occasion to help me find them for much-needed gas. They weren't conning on purpose, but the trails pointed the way quite well to where the Texaco station was.

As far as Thermit's study goes and how it fits in to the big picture here, I really don't have much to contradict his findings. It was all done quite well. I've e-mailed him to let him know that I thought that he did a great job with the study. His findings indicate that something not showing up on Flight Explorer is making persistent contrails inconsistent with the aircraft showing up on Flight Explorer for the same period. Something, not necessarily military.

If military, it could be a deploying fighter unit being dragged by tankers somewhere. These formations are frequently given "block altitudes" of several thousand feet and ATC keeps all other aircraft out of this altitude. So, if this were true, there may not be any other aircraft at the same altitude to produce the same contrails for a period of time. As a matter of fact, most air refueling, either for training or travelling, occurs in an ATC-assigned "block" altitude of no less than 2,000 feet. It's unfortunate that we don't know the altitudes that the unknown aircraft are flying at (who knows how to get it, too-laser rangefinder, maybe?)

But, the aircraft that Thermit observed may not be military, and we're getting into a whole new ball game with a new set of rules. Your guess is as good as mine if it's another agency.

Hopefully, similar studies of the same magnitude as Thermit's show up from other locations so we can get a better look at a cross-section of the USA. I'm still trying to digest all of Thermit's report, though!

Maverick