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California Contrail Explained - Not Missile - False Alarm
Friends, Fiends, Blue Suiters and Zoomies | MB26

Posted on 11/10/2010 8:24:09 AM PST by MindBender26

California Contrail Explained - Not Missile

After having about 10 experienced pilots and another 20 of us who are accustomed to watching missile launches from Cape Canaveral review tape, we have most probable answer for the mysterious California contrail. Tape was also reviewed by senior official at NGA.

It is not a missile. It is the contrail of a airliner at altitude moving toward the camera, at an angle of about 30 degrees off center to the right. Retired TRANSPAC airline pilots and USAF types said it was a rather common sight to see as they are climbing out over water on a westerly heading at sunset.

A few clues:

1. This is not as new event. The photographer who took video said in interview that it was very much like others he had seen week earlier.

2. Expanding contrail plume gives illusion that bottom/rear of plume is closer to observer than the top/newest part of plume, that which is near the aircraft. It is an illusion.

3. The light emanating from the object that looks like rocket flame is a reflection of the sun off the aluminum bottom of the a/c fuselage. The clues that it is not a rocket flame are that it is not hidden by contrail, and more importantly, is the same color temperature as the sun's other reflections.

4. There were no alarms from the DSP satellites. They detect heat from rocket launches from geostationary orbit. They are very good, so good in fact that when Sovs had a fire in an ICBM silo a few years ago, it was reported at NORAD immediately.

5. No radar, and there are numerous ATC and air defense radars in that area, had any track, primary or transponder, of any object on a course as speculated.

All in all, a false alarm. A very interesting one, but a false alarm.

Not the first false alarm, either. In the 60s, we went to DEFCON 2 based on DEW and PineTree line radar returns indicating Sov bombers inbound over Greenland. Was really delayed radar echoes off the rising moon.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: californiamissile; chat; contrail; hearsay; missilemystery; mysterymissile; propaganda; scuttlebutt; swampgas; tinfoilbrigade; vanity
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To: Names Ash Housewares

Yes, a contrail from an airplane. There are many things at work here contributing to the illusion. Curvature of the earth, sun below the horizon, etc.


101 posted on 11/10/2010 9:09:26 AM PST by coon2000 (Give me Liberty or give me death!)
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To: SeeSac

I read several of the reports and watched the video. I didn’t hear one word about this guy saying it looked like a chem-trail to him.

What am I supposed to do, call the guy and conduct a personal interview?

Duh!


102 posted on 11/10/2010 9:10:34 AM PST by DoughtyOne (Your next chance like this? About 2044. Vote popularity and don't waste time with the details.)
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To: MindBender26
Looks like the photographer was smoking a joint at the time he took the photograph. /sarc

BULLSH!T1000
103 posted on 11/10/2010 9:10:43 AM PST by Electric Graffiti (I'm armed and Amish.)
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To: butterdezillion

Russia launched an ICBM at Obama when he was Oslo last December picking up his Nobel Peace Prize. And the Kenyan cut short his Norway visit because of it.

This is just Russia’s way of taunting Obama while he was off playing King of The World, taking half of the U.S. Pacific fleet with him.

If anyone wants to know why the Russian sub wasn’t detected, it was because our fleet was focused on protecting the Kenyan in India/Indonesia.


104 posted on 11/10/2010 9:11:20 AM PST by jimbo123
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To: SeeSac

Quit wiping your snot on my sleeve.

Yours isn’t the only opinion around here, and a lot of us aren’t buying what you’re selling.


105 posted on 11/10/2010 9:12:11 AM PST by DoughtyOne (Your next chance like this? About 2044. Vote popularity and don't waste time with the details.)
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To: MindBender26

And then there’s this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/10/earlyshow/main7040379.shtml

But Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, examined the video for the Times of London and said he was left with little doubt.

“It’s a solid propellant missile,” he told the Times. “You can tell from the efflux [smoke].”


106 posted on 11/10/2010 9:13:07 AM PST by SE Mom (Proud mom of an Iraq war combat vet)
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To: DoughtyOne
I read several of the reports and watched the video. I didn’t hear one word about this guy saying it looked like a chem-trail to him. What am I supposed to do, call the guy and conduct a personal interview? Duh!

Go here!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2624870/posts

107 posted on 11/10/2010 9:13:17 AM PST by SeeSac
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To: MindBender26
But, we want to beleive . . ■
/sarc
108 posted on 11/10/2010 9:13:17 AM PST by ßuddaßudd (7 days - 7 ways Guero >>> with a floating, shifting, ever changing persona.....)
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To: SE Mom

(From David Martin, CBS...today)

The video of what looks for all the world like the contrail of a missile was shot Monday evening by KCBS cameraman Gil Leyvas from a news helicopter over Los Angeles.

“I saw a big plume coming up, rising from looked like beyond the horizon and it continued to grow,” Leyvas said.

He zoomed his camera in and stayed on it for about 10 minutes. To him it looked like an incoming missile.

“It was unique. It was moving,” he said. “It was growing in the sky.


109 posted on 11/10/2010 9:15:32 AM PST by roses of sharon (I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13)
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To: DoughtyOne
Quit wiping your snot on my sleeve. Yours isn’t the only opinion around here, and a lot of us aren’t buying what you’re selling.

Yep. The same dudes that thought this was a missile, also.


110 posted on 11/10/2010 9:16:00 AM PST by SeeSac
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To: Alas Babylon!
Did we detect this launch last year when Putin launched an submarine-based ICBM at Obama when he was in Oslo picking up his Nobel Peach Prize?


111 posted on 11/10/2010 9:16:13 AM PST by jimbo123
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To: MindBender26

I finally watched the video last night. I concur with this article. I love contrails and have seen all sorts from all angles. As soon as I saw the video I noticed it looked suspiciously like a high altitude aircraft contrail. And even when the camera zoomed in, the speed of the aircraft matched the speed I would expect to see. Even the “flame” I immediately identified as the reflection of the sun off the plane. Heck, I’ve seen that from time to time at dusk even when the plane was producing NO contrail. It’s pretty cool.

What was most troubling to me was that the video was cut short. If it had run another minute or two, it would have been VERY clear what it was.

On a side note, I would have loved to have seen the contrails left by those 1,000 plane B-17 raids over Germany in the mid-1940’s - but from “flyover” territory, for obvious reasons.


112 posted on 11/10/2010 9:17:26 AM PST by RobRoy (The US Today: Revelation 18:4)
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To: SE Mom

“It’s a solid propellant missile,” he told the Times. “You can tell from the efflux [smoke].”

Exactly. Don’t believe your eyes.....believe the gubbermint.


113 posted on 11/10/2010 9:19:30 AM PST by Electric Graffiti (I'm armed and Amish.)
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To: bgill

Although, after seeing the video last night, I am convinced it is nothing more than an aircraft contrail, what mucks this up is that people in an official capacity said it was a sea launched missle from a launch point roughly 35 miles out.

They should get their stories straight.


114 posted on 11/10/2010 9:19:29 AM PST by RobRoy (The US Today: Revelation 18:4)
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To: cripplecreek; All
--yep--many a morning , if I look east shortly after sunrise , I can see jet trails from McCarran or otherwise which vary from the usual to those spread over several degrees of sky, sometime adding (or subtracting) to the sunrise--

--as an aside to this , relating to stuff in the sky, in the summer of 1949 , my dad and I (on the farm in SW Wisconsin) were suprised to see a pattern of streaks going across the sky, unlike anything we had ever seen. My dad ( who had fantastic vision) could make out a large plane at the front of each streak, which upon closer examination with my 3-power field glasses could be seen to have 6 engines , plus jet pack at the end of the wings--we had seen a flight of B-36's--

--next day , the Dubuque, IA Telegraph-Herald had a story about " unidentified strange objects flying over--I've had a great skepticism about media stuff such as this ever since--

115 posted on 11/10/2010 9:20:13 AM PST by rellimpank
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To: sissyjane

>>If this is true, then please tell me what airline and what flight number. Waiting...<<

Someone already did on one of the other threads on this. I believe it was a flight coming into somewhere in AZ. He said that if it was not them, they would have definitely seen the missile, because they were in the same place.


116 posted on 11/10/2010 9:21:48 AM PST by RobRoy (The US Today: Revelation 18:4)
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To: SeeSac

Nice link. /s

Once again, an aircraft traveling at 350 to 450 mph isn’t going to take very long to arrive at the helicopter or a place where the helicopter can get a different enough perspective to be able to identify it as an aircraft rather than a missile.

Have you seen a report that describes this having taken place?

And yet you blather on about what this is as if you really know. You don’t. None of us do yet.

We’ve got some theories and that’s it. Arguing about it is juvenile.


117 posted on 11/10/2010 9:21:48 AM PST by DoughtyOne (Your next chance like this? About 2044. Vote popularity and don't waste time with the details.)
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To: Alas Babylon!

If this was a regular commercial flight why didn’t the Pentagon say it was instead of we don’t know nothing. How about the FAA coming out and saying it was a commercial flight. Why are they so silent? Was there same flight there last night?

Sorry folks I still ain’t buying this commercial airliner explanation.


118 posted on 11/10/2010 9:22:03 AM PST by McGruff (A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs)
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To: Wissa

I am often disappointed with the lack of logical skepticism found in our society.

Important questions - Did the cameraman continue to roll the video or simply cut it off?

You take an incomplete video, add talking heads on a slow news day, and created a conspiracy theory that will last until death for thousands.

Have any of you watched a video of an ICBM launch?

To those saying the contrail is bigger at the bottom.... do air currents affect vapor at 35000 feet? Does water vapor stay in one spot or dissipate? Have you never seen an uneven contrail in the sky?

Ask yourself why the cameraman did not continue to shoot video of the object? Did the cameraman shoot the whole video and select a small portion to create his own illusion? If they really thought it was a missile what was more exciting at this moment 35 miles off the coast near LA?

Post 9/11, they scramble jets to everything. Why was there no reaction from NORAD or the military?

Again, we take an interesting video that should entertain any skeptic and create a politicized conspiracy theory out of it. Pass the popcorn and enjoy the debate.


119 posted on 11/10/2010 9:22:43 AM PST by volunbeer
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To: MindBender26

Good. Now we can go on breathing, and get back to the important things. Headin’ for the Donut Shop.


120 posted on 11/10/2010 9:23:19 AM PST by rockinqsranch (Dems, Libs, Socialists, call 'em what you will, they ALL have fairies livin' in their trees.)
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