Message posted by lone wolf on May 03, 2005 at 12:40:10 PST:

I have other reasons not to take the report too seriously, but a blacked out plane is quite easy to spot with night vision under the right circumstances. First, it needs to be backlit, i.e. a silhouette. The light from Vegas can easily do the job. Second, it needs to be close. Night vision tends to have little magnification. Light intensity is reduced as the square of the increase in magnification, i.e. 2x magnification has 1/4 the light relative to no magification. If the plane isn't close, you might see light from a hot spot since night vision does extend into infrared a bit, but not deep infrared. You can easily see a soldering iron glow with night vision.

The size of the plane is not impossible. The An-124 is 226ft in length. A B52 is 159ft in length.

You need to check the time of the moon rise. The test that Joerg, Bill and myself watched was done before the moon had risen, so you don't need a moonless night. Note that the plane that we saw tested never flew high enough to be backlit. All we saw was the solid white light on the plane. The base sort of blacks out during tests to keep the ambient light level low.

In Reply to: Tikaboo Trip Report posted by werD on May 02, 2005 at 23:50:54 PST:

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