Message posted by gary on October 25, 2000 at 03:35:21 EST:

I was hanging around Haystack Butte (east side of Edwards) this morning taking photos with my telescope. [More like practice for Area 51 since the site is not a secret.] While there was no film in my camera, 3 planes crossed over my head. I managed to put the 400mm lens on the camera to at least look at the planes, but they moved too fast. This was around 9:30AM. I had scanned the Edwards trunk system in the morning, so I know the Lockhead photographer was on site. [Anyone with a camera on base gets special attention.]

I headed on base around noon to watch the shuttle land. Only 2000 people showed up, so you could of arrived an hour before the landing and had no problems getting on base. The shuttle appeared to the west (it was in the sun), made a double sonic boom, did a U-turn, then landed. The U-turn was the best part. I heard on the trunk system that the plane would be landing from left to right, but I knew it was coming in from the right (west), so I figured they would have to do a U turn, but it would be so wide that my guess would be the U-turn would be done out of site. Not so. The turn was incredibly tight.

Film at 11, well at 11 in a few days. Needless to say, lots of enlargement will be required. You could just see the shuttle in a 400mm lens.

In Reply to: Re: X-35A is Airborne! posted by Anders on October 25, 2000 at 01:45:09 EST:

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