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Ala Occam’s Razor ...keeping it simple...there would be two things I’d want to ask the cameraman. What he thought the object was (since I’m sure he like all of us here in LA basin has seen countless airliner contrails before...but he made a big deal out of THIS particular one) and precisely where he said this took place. I wouldn’t get an answer of “near” and let it go at that...when the whole debate hinges on flight 902 of which we know the exact location at the time. Instead people are playing semantics with the word “near”...reminds of Clinton defining what the definition of “sex” was...I thought someone here talked to him? Ask him again. All I have is the yellow dot northwest of the island and all you have is flight tracking of a heavy jet in the area. Damn ...give me his email address and I’ll ask him if for some reason you people don’t want to.

The guy who started this thread (Dr. Brian Kopp) has been talking to the cameraman. He has already asked him the questions you asked (what and where). Here are the cameraman's answers...

What: "I'm still not sure what the object is, jet or missile or for that matter, something else."

Where: "He said there were details in the video that had not been shown on TV or online, such as how at one point the contrail lined up parallel with the LA harbor jetty, which was how he was certain of the location of the contrail when he first spotted it." And, of course he has also been quoted as saying "The onboard camera showed a plume twisting up from the horizon and narrowing as it climbed into the sky near Catalina Island, about 35 miles west of Los Angeles, he said."

But since we have actual stills from the video he shot, we don't have to rely solely on his memory. They are obviously going to be more accurate anyway. I've posted it before, but here it is again...

That is a still taken from his video with some easily identifiable geographic references and the contrail. You can go with his pictures and what he says...or a media graphic that goes against both.

Finally, UPS902 didn't fly over Catalina Island until roughly 5:30 and it was descending through FL290 from its original altitude of FL390. A. that was after he was filming, B. It is extremely doubtful the con layer was 10,000 feet thick. Conversely, UPS902 was almost exactly at the intersection of lines plotted from Leyvas' position to the contrail he filmed (in the posted picture) and the Cargo Law camera at LAX, at exactly the time stamp of the LAX camera. If you want to use Occam's Razor, you can do the simple math and agree that two lines of sight and a time stamp that correlate to the known position of a known object equal that known object, orrrr, you can ignore Occam's Razor and create a theory involving an unknown sub, firing an unknown missile, from an unknown location, at an unknown target for unknown reasons based solely on 14 seconds of zoomed in video edited from 10 minutes of actual video, and presented by a local television affiliate during sweeps week.

Brian, you should probably field this question (#492) since you talked with Gil at length, wrote this article about that interview, and are still in contact with him.

Niteflyr, I'm just the cartographer, video analyst, and graphics guy on this ad hoc "contrail team" -- and I'm just starting to gain a bit of familiarity with using Google Earth to put in 3-D what I normally do in 2-D...

However, I will say that I defy anyone to plot a path (like that of UPS 902) beginning at the "CBS 35 mile start point" and climbing northwest out over the Pacific-- and show that it bears any resemblance at all to the video and photographs of the original event.

Hint: the ONLY instance where that can be done is when you are only a minute fraction of degree south of the track and looking at it almost directly in line with it. Travel a couple of miles north or south up and down the coast, and it is obvious that the recorded object was headed inbound toward California -- not headed outbound over the Pacific.

If you look at ALL the facts, that point is indisputable. It just so happens that UPS 902 matches reality with as near perfection as can be measured with the tools at hand.

Niteflyr, what was your "take" on that Google Earth video?

Brian, what say you?