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Thread: Flower bloom in Death valley

  1. #61
    Tin Can's Avatar
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    Re: Flower bloom in Death valley

    1977 I found a mile of tiny jet bits in the Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range, that ended at an isolated bridge. I hope the pilot bailed

    2015 Plans https://www.mcasyuma.marines.mil/Por...c_Draft_EA.pdf

    Camped there for 3 winters, at night it was very interesting

    Some aerial things did move very strangely
    Tin Can

  2. #62
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Flower bloom in Death valley

    How the heck do you know Pieter?? It's either that or the Aliens have a Navy too; but there doesn't seem to be enough water on Mars itself. But there were various ways the Govt had for shifting large amounts of money around; and it seems a number of experimental craft were Navy funded originally. I was on the summit ridge of the White Mtns around 11,000 ft under the darkcloth, and when I pulled my head out, there it was right overhead, almost as if floating it moved so slow, maybe only a couple hundred feet above - not a trace of sound or vapor trail. A big bulbous front like a Klingon starship, roughly like a B52 behind but stubbier wings, and the four most enormous jet engines I've even seen, apparently specially muffled. I thought to myself, There goes a billion dollars worth of carbon fiber. This was prior to the mass production of the current bat-winged stealth.

  3. #63
    Pieter's Avatar
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    Re: Flower bloom in Death valley

    Quote Originally Posted by Drew Wiley View Post
    How the heck do you know Pieter?? It's either that or the Aliens have a Navy too; but there doesn't seem to be enough water on Mars itself. But there were various ways the Govt had for shifting large amounts of money around; and it seems a number of experimental craft were Navy funded originally. I was on the summit ridge of the White Mtns around 11,000 ft under the darkcloth, and when I pulled my head out, there it was right overhead, almost as if floating it moved so slow, maybe only a couple hundred feet above - not a trace of sound or vapor trail. A big bulbous front like a Klingon starship, roughly like a B52 behind but stubbier wings, and the four most enormous jet engines I've even seen, apparently specially muffled. I thought to myself, There goes a billion dollars worth of carbon fiber. This was prior to the mass production of the current bat-winged stealth.
    I wasn't doubting you saw something. Only that it was Navy. Chill. If the Navy funded some sort of stealth craft, they don't seem to have pursued it -- possibly it could just be too difficult to land on an aircraft carrier.

  4. #64
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Flower bloom in Death valley

    Someone was with me who actually got a 35mm film shot showing not only the Navy logo but numbers. I can't go into detail; but we got it into the hands of someone with a high level security clearance, and it took even him six months to identify the experimental model. It was all Navy funded. They even ran the semi-secret radar installation around there that was actually capable of tracking stealth planes (which explains why it was flying there and not somewhere else). Later, when an early B1-style (batwing) stealth crashed in part of the Kern Canyon, by the time the Forest Service arrived to put out the fire, a big hush-hush crew had already been there and picked up every piece of the proprietary carbon fiber. Aircraft carriers had nothing to do with it. All kinds of designs were experimented with early on, some applicable to ships, some not. I probably saw a one-of-a- kind.

  5. #65

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    Re: Flower bloom in Death valley

    There's a Navy base in Ridgecrest / China Lake. It was a major WW2 Naval munitions (?) testing facility. I have no idea what goes on there now, but it's still open. Whether there are runways there, who know. but, as someone mentioned, Edwards AFB is only about 60 miles from there.

    I have also been "strafed" when on SR 14, which is the "extension" of US 395 that goes into Los Angeles.

  6. #66
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Flower bloom in Death valley

    We aren't supposed to know what "goes on" certain places. I've had some long chats with a couple of old test pilots, and it's kinda amazing what kinds of anecdotes they'll talk about, and what lies on the other side of a boundary line they simply won't cross at all.

  7. #67
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    Re: Flower bloom in Death valley

    One of the boundary lines is between services. They strongly dislike sharing equipment. The F-4 Phantom was hard for the Air Force to take on, as is with the Navy variant of the current F-35 Lightning II.

  8. #68
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Flower bloom in Death valley

    There never were a lot of test pilots to go around, in terms of experimental aircraft. For one thing, the very nature of the job thins them out prematurely. For another, NASA picked off many of the best.

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