Just back from A51. An interesting sighting, and two questions for the experts here


Message posted by jgalt on August 20, 2012 at 4:41:05 PST:

Hi all,

We spent two nights at A51 last week, one camped near the Back Gate, and one on Campfire Hill, near the Front Gate. We chose weeknights, during the dark of the moon intentionally, on the theory that the odds of seeing something interesting at night would increase.

Much to my surprise, the one VERY interesting sighting we had was during the day, and we saw nothing at night, despite sitting outside in our lawn chairs from sundown until well after midnight.

So, my two questions...

1) The security (so-called Cammo Dudes) seemed MUCH more hyper-active and paranoid about our presence at the front gate. They were pretty much all over us, sending a white pickup out to campfire hill every hour so so and driving slowly past our RV before pointing their lights up the hill to where we had the chairs set up on top for the best viewing. Knowing that we were "legal", we simply ignored them, and they never did anything more than drive by us....although many times in the course of the 18 hours we were there.

At the back gate, we were completely ignored during the day, though they did come around a couple of times at night. They saw us, but showed almost no interest at all....at least during the day.

Does anyone have any idea why they'd be so much more aggressive at the Front Gate than at the Back Gate?

2) Now, as to our sighting. At about 7:30 in the morning we'd climbed back to the top of Campfire Hill, mostly just to check out the fantastic scenery. We had no expectation of seeing anything of interest in the skies, as we'd seen nothing the night before, and I was under the impression that all of the "good stuff" flew only at night.

As we looked towards the hills that hide the base from view, the first thing we saw was a jet of some sort that took off heading north. Even as close as Campfire Hill is to the border, it's still a long way from the runway, so the plane was too small to be identified...it was basically just a dot. But it turned out to be quite helpful, as it gave us some sort of scale for the second, and more interesting sighing.

Then the amazing thing happened. A few minutes after seeing the first plane, a MUCH larger plane appeared. It lifted up barely above the ridge of the mountains for just about 10 seconds. I would guess that they were intentionally trying to keep it inside the natural bowl of mountains that surround A51, which would make it invisible to anyone outside the actual facility. But because we were on elevated ground, and because (I'm guessing) the pilot slipped up slightly and for a few seconds went a tiny bit higher than intended, we were afforded a brief glimpse of something very unusual just above the mountain tops.

It was a large black triangle. It did a few turns, which at one point presented us with a view of its underside, which showed it to be a perfect triangle, not the Stealth Bomber, which looks much more like a normal aircraft. I'm a pilot myself, and can tell you with certainty that this plane was not using any weird or other-worldly propulsion system. It moved exactly like a normal aircraft...banking in turns, etc. But it was HUGE. While the first plane appeared to us as just a dot, this one was big enough that we could easily make out its shape and characteristics.

It didn't appear to be moving at supersonic speeds, which of course isn't to say that it wasn't capable of doing so.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what this may have been? It was absolutely positively NOT a Stealth Bomber. I know exactly what a SB looks like, and it is miles away from being a perfect triangle, which the plane we saw most definitely was.

Many thanks,


Replies:



[ Discussion Forum Index ] [ FAQ ]