Message posted by Aaron Johnson on August 19, 2003 at 12:21:17 PST:
Tuesday August 12th 2003. We had awoken up around 8 am and immediately headed for the Coyote Summit to watch further activity of Red Flag participants. This time we got some good close fly-bys from F-16’s and F-15’s. Again as noted in the discussion forum F150 and this time Jim Bob showed up. Afterwards Chuck showed up but said that he had to leave because he had personal matters to deal with in Las Vegas. Then we got to the A-le-Inn and had breakfast and chatted with Joe for a little while about what he had gone through and still going through with his medical condition. Then we decided to see if there was any way to get closer to the base from the backside of Groom Mountains and took a dirt road into the mountains a third of a mile east of the Back Gate area. We drove on and on for quite a long while climbing up the mountain and, as was expected, there was a No Trespassing sign on the 2nd to last hill. But I did enjoy the mountain terrain and the scenic view. Norio had decided to hike up the hill a little bit and saw to the south of us one of those silver sphere sensors. Approximately no later than 10 minutes had elapsed when two cammo duds showed up at this border in one of their dark gray Chevy pick up truck. Also, don’t assume these trucks are not capable of going off road. This road we had stopped on was a narrow, one vehicle road and the sides of the road were at least 2 feet high with loose dirt and rocks and small pine type trees all around. While we were a few yards away from our parked vehicle, the cammo truck then went right around our vehicle with very little problem and continued up the road just past the border and parked like they do at the Groom lake road border and facing us. End of trip report part2
Exotic bird watcher: Aaron - trip report part 2
It was a tense sight.
Then we headed off to the A-le-Inn for a lunch. I met up with Chris (Pat and Joe’s son-in -law) and some tourists from Canada who may be joining the Deamland Resort discussion and chats soon. We showed them the Back Gate and then we asked if they knew about Red Flag. So we invited them along with us to the Coyote Summit and this time we got buzzed by F15’s and F-16s. Most went behind the hill of Coyote Summit. On the scanners those poor British pilots in their Sea Harriers just kept getting clobbered as we heard them having to "regenerate" quite a bit. At one point they had to abort due to weather that afternoon. Later on in the evening we went to the Mailbox area. Norio wanted to retire for the evening so he said good night to F150 and I said I’ll be back later so we can chat and watch for "UFO’s" some more. While enroute on highway 375 going back to our rooms at the A-le-Inn, Norio noticed some lights off to the right of us. I saw a 2nd set of nav lights myself. These appeared to be military helicopters with regular nav lights on the night run. Sorry not UFO-like at all.
Upon reaching Rachel, unfortunately while yours truly had to go to the bathroom, I had heard a loud sound of a jet fly over. Norio hollered something and of course I made a likely guess as to what it was since I heard the sound of the aircraft loud and clear. A few minutes later Norio had said he saw a triangular-shaped military aircraft (not sure though if it was conventional) and that the underside glowed fluorescent greenish white in color. I thought back for a moment and thought that could this probably have been what is called daytime stealth or chameleon camouflaging technology? Most of the sky at that time was cloudy and broken and moon lit from above the cloud pack. Secondly what would be the light source for the underside of said aircraft? Since the light source was above and not below and not enough street lighting too light up the underside being as high as it was basing on Norio’s description had to be about 3000 feet in altitude. Could these jets have been F-22 Raptors on a night test flight, employing some of the newer type of camouflaging?.
The reason why I say Raptors is because upon arrival at the Mail Box area I asked F150 if they had seen the jets and they had stated yes and they saw one light up the afterburners and go straight up practically. However, what Norio saw could have been a different military jet.
In any case the trip to southern Nevada i.e. area 51 was an memorable one. On Wednesday we headed home.
In Reply to: Norio and Aaron's arae 51 trip part 1 monday aug 11 posted by Aaron Johnson on August 16, 2003 at 22:48:03 PST:
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