From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V3 #76 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 14 July 1993 Volume 03 : Number 076 In this issue: Re: In the desert skies tonight Stealth planes over Belgium ? Re: Gray F-117 Skunky stuff in Southern California Re: New DC-X Info See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: dnadams@nyx.cs.du.edu (Dean Adams) Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 03:04:57 MDT Subject: Re: In the desert skies tonight Rick says... >or "Life under the flight pattern". >Must be nice. Yep! I'm sure there are a lot of interesting birds that like to drop in on Plant 42. In the old days there would have been Blackbirds down from Beale for regular maintenance and upgrades, but now I suppose one has to make due with 117s, TR-1s, B-1Bs, AC-130s, and the occasional Space Shuttle/SCA combo... :-) >The gray one intrigues me (as it must others). >Do you see that color often? My question leads to the >thought "Is it a test bird or are they getting new paint?" I figured it was one of the Flight Test birds. I think they can be found around Edwards on a fairly regular basis. >I assume that they're coming out of Plant 42 after upgrades... Could be, although I think there is a regular "test flight" pattern between Edwards and Palmdale, so its possible they could have originated from either place. From what i've heard, "buzzing the plant" is not too unusual for them. - -dean ------------------------------ From: PHARABOD@frcpn11.in2p3.fr Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 16:06:49 MET Subject: Stealth planes over Belgium ? (Some of you already know about parts of that, some don't) ._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._. The Belgian skies south-east of Brussels were densely populated during the night March 30-31, 1990. There were at least three, and maybe six bright lights with changing colors, observed by gendarmes from 23 h (local time) to 1 h. There were two F-16, guided by the Glons CRC, hunting true or false echoes from 0 h to 1 h. Local time = GMT + 2. But there was something else. At 0 h 28, the Semmerzake radar detected an object 2500 ft over the western part of the Brussels agglomeration, moving towards Liege (roughly speaking, towards east) at 450 knots. At 0 h 29, the Glons radar detected it also. From 0 h 29 to 0 h 33, both radars followed the craft, which was going in straight line towards Liege, increasing its speed and its altitude. The Semmerzake radar spotted it again 6000 ft over Liege at 0 h 35, speed 650 knots. The last point was some 12 miles east of Liege, altitude 12000 ft, at 0 h 36. The Semmerzake radar is an array type radar. It is used for military air safety. Semmerzake is about 30 miles west of Brussels. Glons CRC is a part of NADGE (NATO Air Defense Ground Environment). There are about 80 NADGE CRC in Europe (including Turkey). Its missions are: 1. detect and follow every flight in the Belgian air space, 2. identify friend or foe, 3. if foe, intercept and/or destroy according to the alert status. The Glons radar is a multipurpose impulsion type radar. Glons is about 6 miles north of Liege. The distance Brussels-Liege is about 60 miles. The object was in the lower beam of the Glons radar. Its altitude was measured by the Semmerzake radar. There is another radar at Bertem, for civilian traffic. The craft passed 5 miles south of Bertem at 0 h 30. The Bertem radar did not see it. ._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._. I may be wrong, but this mysterious craft looks like a stealth plane. First, it was not one of the F-16, which were always seen by the Glons radar and described complicated loops at about 10,000 ft altitude. The unknown craft was not always seen, and the civilian radar did not see it. Its mean speed was 550 knots, about top speed of the F-117 (646 m p h). If it really reached 650 knots, it could not be an F-117 (but are speeds measured by radar that precise ?). It seems that only the rear part of the plane and its nose could be seen (rear seen by Semmerzake, nose seen by Glons). Are the rear and nose of the F-117 more easily seen than other parts ? Some of you know that there have been a lot of observations of not yet identified delta-shaped crafts in Belgium from November 1989 to mid-1991. They looked like TR-3 A more than like F-117 A. Here in France, many people think they were really TR-3 A: "Les avions-espions qu'on prend pour des 'OVNI'", by Bernard Thouanel, Science et Vie, November 1991 (Science et Vie is our biggest popularization review). "Les OVNI du Pentagone" (="The Pentagone's UFOs"), by Christophe Agnus and Gilbert Charles, L'Express, 18(?) June 1993 (L'Express is one of our three biggest political weekly reviews). However, this hypothesis is not entirely convincing: 1) There are practically no sightings of TR-3 A over the USA. Why this massive invasion of Belgium ? 2) The Belgian objects have been reported hovering many times. Can the TR-3 A hover ? (not impossible, in my opinion). Maybe Russian stealth planes, avenging for Mathias Rust (sp?) landing on the Red Square in Moscow ? J. Pharabod ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 11:44:41 -0700 Subject: Re: Gray F-117 Mary DoD #0362 KotFR writes: >We were on our way home from running some errands tonight when we looked >up and saw a two-man of F-117s, one black, one gray. They weren't doing >anything special--they had just turned right out of the Plant 42 pattern >... Interesting! Would I be correct in assuming that gray bird might have been one of the 5 FSD birds? In other words, one of the first 5 F-117's made, one of the 5 F-117 prototypes. The FSD birds were non-production F-117's, from what I recall. I also recall that they nicknamed these birds Scorpion 1 thru 5. The story is in "We Own The Night". Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe #1 is at Nellis on a pole, #2 is at AF Museum (in storage/display?), and numbers 3,4,5 are at Palmdale, and can be used for flight test. Larry ------------------------------ From: Rob Kroeger Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 15:13:57 -0400 Subject: Skunky stuff in Southern California I'm going to Siggraph in Annaheim at the beginning of August and was wondering if there are any really good skunk works treats that I could see in the area. I believe reading here that there's a museum at Edward's. Maybe someone from the Southern California area could tell me what I could see. Rob Kroeger CGL University of Waterloo ------------------------------ From: rschnapp@metaflow.com (Russ Schnapp) Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 14:28:13 PDT Subject: Re: New DC-X Info Just so folks don't get any ideas about planning to attend DC-X test flights: Doug Reeder's synopsis was posted on BIX yesterday, and was responded to by a couple of folks closely associated with the DC-X program (including G. Harry Stine, well-known to any model rocketeers and science fiction fans among us). Unless you are directly associated with the program, or are a VVVVIP, you have almost no chance of witnessing a DC-X flight in person. The public is generally not invited onto the White Sands Military Reservation. Dr. Gaubatz has apparently apologized for any misunderstanding resulting from his presentation. He says he had no intention of implying that the public could attend. The flights *may* be broadcast on NASA Select, depending upon when they take place, and what the prior commitments are for the satellite transponder. Commercial networks will very likely be given access for both the "bunny hop" stability tests, and the "official" flights. I sure wish I could get my cable company to carry NASA Select. I guess they just can't afford the bandwidth, as it is copyright-free. ...Russ ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V3 #76 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. Administrative requests, problems, and other non-list mail can be sent to either "skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu" or, if you don't like to type a lot, "prm@ecn.purdue.edu". 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