Posted on 03/13/2021 1:16:00 PM PST by SamAdams76
With my Plane Finder app, I've been tracking aircraft flying directly over my home in Newtown, CT at about 35,000 feet on average. Under about 30,000 feet there are no contrails but right around 29,500 feet seems to be the magic altitude number for contrails. I've had some planes sprout contrails right over my home just as they reached that height.
Most of them coming from Boston and heading to Florida, usually Ft Meyers but sometimes Naples and Tampa. A few headed to Charlotte, NC. One was on its way to Houston.
Even though six miles overhead, you can make out the shape of the plane pretty clearly and even see the wings. Some airlines are distinctive even from that height when the sun hits just right. For example, you can see the orange bottoms of Southwest and the yellow bottoms of Spirit.
So I was thinking what if all the planes currently in the air were to be time-travelled back 200 years where they would be suddenly flying over the America of 1821? James Monroe would have been president at the time. Would he have convened emergency Cabinet meetings to discuss the strange objects far up in the sky?
Abraham Lincoln would have been 12 years old and certainly puzzled by what he would see when looking up in the sky and seeing all those planes criss-crossing the skies of Indiana.
Would the people of 1821 recognize the airplanes of 2021 for what they were? Would they see them as cylinders of aluminum composites hurtling overhead at 450mph ferrying humans from point A to point B? Would they be able to understand the aerodynamics of how such heavy objects could get themselves up in the air like that? Or would they think we were being observed by aliens from a different planet?
What would they think of the contrails?
Also, what would the people of 2021 up in the air think if suddenly it was the America of 1821 sitting below them? Modern cities and highways would instantly disappear to be mostly farmlands and horse trails. The pilots would lose all communications with their air traffic controllers and be completely on their own.
They would need to find a flat, level place to land. Then, once landed, what would those early Americans on the ground think of these strange people, mostly in cargo shorts and sneakers, sliding down those rubber inflatable slides used for emergency landings?
They wouldn’t have believed that the people let the government steal the election.
Flush toilets would have thrown them for a loop as well.
The possible view prior to departure:
Number 66,789 on my list of things to worry about.
They would have been too busy digging out of the Blizzard of 1888 to notice.
Global Flight 33 is en route from London to New York in what appears to be a routine flight in a modern jetliner. Suddenly however, the jet's speed increases to an incredible 3000 knots and they arrive in New York rather quickly. Neither the captain or his well-trained crew can explain what happened - a strange tail-wind perhaps - but they are certainly not prepared for what they find as they survey the land below them.
he first balloon flight with passengers (a sheep, a duck and a rooster) took off on Sept. 19, 1783.
They would have seen silvery things that looked like crosses or thought they were angels flying and the end times were near. Or, they’d wonder who put whatever into the whiskey they were drinking.
They wouldnt have allowed the election to be stolen. They would’ve sacrificed their homes, lives, fortunes and families. That’s what they would’ve done.
They would register them as meteorological phenomena.
He should have washed the dishes.
I doubt people from back then conceived of inhabited worlds beyond Earth.
Would the people of 1821 recognize the airplanes of 2021 for what they were? Would they see them as cylinders of aluminum composites hurtling overhead at 450 mph ferrying humans from point A to point B? Would they be able to understand the aerodynamics of how such heavy objects could get themselves up in the air like that? Or would they think we were being observed by aliens from a different planet?
I too track airplanes here in Jacksonville, Fl...I signed up with Flightaware, if you use their software and agree to send your data to them, they give you a free enterprise account, which opens up support groups and deals on their antenna, etc.....
I collect the data with a Raspberry Pi, my antenna is about 25ft in the air, I would say my antenna position is slightly above average, even with that I can easily pickup planes 100-150 miles away, with a few in the 150-200 miles away...I pretty much pick up anything from Jacksonville southward to Titusville, across to Orlando and to the edge of Tampa out into the Gulf of Mexico and Tallahassee to the west....I can go northward to about Savannah....
So of the sites near me with better antenna placement can pick up planes 250 miles away and over....
Yesterday for example I picked up almost 2700 unique planes in a 24 hour period, the better sites easily were getting over 3000 planes per day....
Data packets put out by the planes, include tail number, flight number, air speed, altitude, direction....type of airplane, 747, airbus, cessna, etc...
It would be back to Witch Trials..........
Think on this. Although they had them, My mom never saw a telephone till high school-my aunt never saw a telephone or heard of one. Never saw a movie-cant think what they called them then, never saw a radio, no electricity, etc. Only till the early to mid 20s did they get that stuff. Everything was by hand.
They knew how to brew beer though, and hard spirits as they called them. Heh.. You all might laugh, but that is how they made their living after prohibition was passed and the depression started.
The feds were busy chashing the boot leggers around Detroit and the Canadian border. Most of the hard stuff was being produced right in their back yards. Beer was a big one. They sold more beer than anything. And it was dam fine stuff. Not the stuff with all those chemicals in it you get now.
Ask Harry Turtledove.
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