A couple of years ago, one night in September, it was quite a warm night and we had our windows open. I was struggling to get to sleep, when I turned over and happened to look out of the window.
I could see a very odd glow/light moving towards the horizon. I shot out of bed and went to the window. Initially I thought it was a plane coming down but it was too big, bright and steady. Then thought it may have been the military as they fire shmoolie’s all the time, but it was too high up and wasn’t that yellow colour.
There was no sound and was quite elegant in its movement downwards towards the north horizon.
The tail of it was flared out and growing longer. Eventually it disappeared and I went back to bed. Sleep was now impossible so I was browsing all sorts and eventually found on twitter multiple sightings…
I learned early on to avoid flinching or saying anything until I’d double checked, haha!
Kinda like when you’re in the passenger seat of your wife’s car and you suck in a deep breath at the 3rd impending collision in ten minutes, then smoothly turn it into a big yawn to show how calm you are.
Very interesting topic
Recently Ryan Graves a former SuperHornet Pilot who had sightings of UAP’s off The East Coast of The USA started his own podcast…He had a very interesting interview with a former Marine Hornet Driver who saw some interesting lights off the coast of California recently.
I just want to say that I have nothing to add, except for the terror I feel when my wife drives at night. But I am really enjoying the frank and pragmatic way that @smokinhole bared his soul here. When someone as cognizant as he is, with the aviation experience he possesses speaks of these things, it is worthy of a listen. Drive on.
Thanks! That’s really kind of you to say @chipwich. My firmly held conviction is that pilots are precisely zero percent as prepared to deal with and process these observations as is the population in general . My job arms me with no credibility to analyze what I saw. But if I can describe it accurately enough (or better, film it) then a group of interested and science-minded people (Mudspikers) might help me make sense of it. I’ve also reached to my favorite podcast, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, but so far crickets.
I would disagree. You have a much better idea of what an aircraft looks like and how it should behave than the general public. So when pilots say they saw a flying object and it wasn’t manoeuvring or looked like any aircraft they have ever seen, then people are less likely to dismiss it than if it was reported by ‘Joe Average’.
It also makes people like that (me for e.g.) feel better and more inclined to also speak up and say, well I have also seen something I can’t explain.
And you are right to a point. My beef with pilots is that we ourselves overestimate our ability to discern size, distance and velocity. We all have the same two eyeballs. The lights I described could have been 45,000’ and 15 miles, 60,000’ and 20 miles, 2000 miles up and 6000 miles forward or (insert your proper triangle here). Without a radar track, my guess is no better than a driver on Route 66.
Yes, but… It was sufficiently out of the ordinary (for you) to be a bit of a head scratcher, who knows how many passengers saw the same thing and went ‘ho-hum’ nothing to see here?
Like the light that I saw, there is no way to accurately estimate altitude, distance and speed. But due to the brightness and ‘apparent’ size it could have been a helicopter or GA aircraft at a couple of KM distance, but we didn’t see any strobes or hear it. If it was far enough away that we couldn’t hear it then it was way too bright, ‘big’ and moving way too fast to be even a military aircraft… In other words (even if it hadn’t made the radical manoeuvers at the end) something sufficiently out of the ordinary for me with my semi educated knowledge of flying things go hmmm
I wondered the same thing. Then all the experts say they’re no good for taking down balloons expeditiously, too little differential pressure for 20mm holes to create significant leaks to deflate quickly.
I dunno if that’s true, valid, or even makes sense.
The idea of closing to a typical gun engagement distance, at 50,000+ feet, supersonic, against a target literally just along for a ride in the jet stream doesn’t sound appealing.
It’d be a good way to end up with balloon fragments (or worse) getting sucked down your intakes post-employment if it did catastrophically fail.
I doubt the F-22 wing will shockstall since it’s designed for trans- and supersonic flight.
But sure, it could get dicey in the transonic speed region.
I think I saw in a video, that the Raptor that shot the balloon was supersonic at missile launch. Pretty impressive design, since it must open the missile bay to launch…
I’ve spent a great deal of time on the ground wearing night vision, and as I’m sure you all do I tend to have an eye toward the sky as often as I can achieve without face-planting. I live within an intersection of approach corridors for two of the busiest airports in the US, and aircraft entering these can be seen for many, many miles with the light amplification of NV.
In particular through NV, the Milky Way is stunningly beautiful and shooting stars are a constant occurrence.
I have, on two occasions, seen what I thought were shooting stars change direction while crossing my view. I’ve never been able to explain how, or why. The question raised above of atmospheric skipping has crossed my mind many times, maybe this is possible?
Full disclosure, I am fascinated by the recent expansion of reporting about sightings over the last decade or so. It feels like a true sea change to societal perception of the concept that there are aerial phenomena we simply cannot explain.
But, I’ve refused to allow myself to assume that what I saw was such a phenomena - specifically because I want it to be.
Also, @WarPig ’s channeling of the experience riding with Mrs Whiskey was uncanny, and hilarious.
A bit of self-necromancy (my thread, not me. Last I check I am still kicking). This phenomenon has not gone away. It is still something most pilots I fly with observe on a percentage of their crossings. It seems most prevalent in Winter and seems to be roughly high over Scotland.
The reason I am renewing the thread is that I have some low-quality footage taken with my phone last night but it gets ruined my YouTube when I attempt to upload. The app takes out the grain and darkens, neither of which help make an already poor video watchable.
Open to suggestion on lossless free ways to upload.
