Okay....that's Strange!

[NSTG8R]

So that was your first post here? Interesting! Very interesting!

Well, not my first post. It was the first thread I created. Not a lot going on back then to discuss/debate, so I figured, "What the heck, maybe someone else has seen something "strange" and didn't want to say anything about it." Still kind of on the fence on the "little green men", but I know what we saw, and by definition they were UFOs.

 

[AriLea]

Ah ha! What we witnessed is what's known as a "distrail" [dissipation trail]. Explained as when an aircraft flies through a supercooled cloud, it disrupts the water droplets causing them to instantly freeze and fall from the cloud leaving a clear path though the cloud. They're very rare.

First time I've ever seen one. Mystery solved.

Except it's still pretty strange that the aircraft cruising down the path of the distrail was leaving a contrail. The distrail should have theoretically removed the moisture from the air in that path which would not allow for the formation of a standard contrail.

Oh well. Thank you Google and Bing for the explanations.

Very cool. I was going to suggest the shadow effect, which looks a lot like that.
When you have a misty layer, and a contrail is formed to the sun side, the shadow will fall on the misty layer. The key here being that the sun should be at such an angle that the contrail is out of sight or not near to the shadow. Obviously this is a lot more dramatic at start and end of day.

Also the shadow of a contrail can fall on itself, making that segment look dark, even with a blue background. But your image was blue breaking white. Which is different.

 

[NSTG8R]

Very cool. I was going to suggest the shadow effect, which looks a lot like that.
When you have a misty layer, and a contrail is formed to the sun side, the shadow will fall on the misty layer. The key here being that the sun should be at such an angle that the contrail is out of sight or not near to the shadow. Obviously this is a lot more dramatic at start and end of day.

Also the shadow of a contrail can fall on itself, making that segment look dark, even with a blue background. But your image was blue breaking white. Which is different.

My wife said yesterday that the distrail was created by something going from east to west. By the time I saw it the aircraft, or whatever, with the funky contrail was heading west to east. Cameras make things at a distance look farther away than they really are. Time to get a little GoPro or something for future "strange events".

 

[Marshall]

Many references to 'sitting on the porch sipping a cold one' since then. Just so people have a reference point...

Just make mine an organic Juice please...

 

[vietvetx2]

First off, I've been working on or around aircraft since I was 18 (53 now), and have seen every conceivable kind of contrail. No strange science to it. Hot engine exhaust at a given altitude condensing/freezing leaving a trail behind the aircraft, pronouncement depending on the moisture content of the air at that particular altitude.

Four friends and I witnessed yesterday, around 5pm CST over the St. Louis area while sitting on my patio, the opposite of a contrail. The weather was beautiful. Relatively clear with some high cirrus clouds. My buddy Faz says, "Man...That's weird!". So I stand up and turn around to see what he's looking at. I'm looking at what can only be described as a "reverse contrail". It's as if something went through the cloud and sucked up the moisture in a perfectly straight west to east line. That was strange enough. Minutes later, and this "reverse contrail" was showing no signs of degrading, an aircraft (I'll have to look at the pics we took to see if the type is discernible) leaving your typical contrail is flying straight down the path of the reverse contrail like it was going down a highway.

I'll post the actual pics from my wife's phone and our camera when I get home tonight, but until then, these are as close to what we saw as I can get...which apparently means this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Any ideas on what could cause this? I'm at a loss.

View attachment 9452


With the aircraft running down the center of the dead straight 'void' in the cloud layer leaving a contrail looking more or less like this.

View attachment 9453

NSTG8R; About 20 yrs ago my wife & I were traveling W on I-64 between Louisville and St. Louis. It was dusk but looking up you could see two aircraft at high altitude flying in formation flying west. Nothing unusual. Then, one aircraft turned to a heading approximately of 180 and all of a sudden he accelerated at tremendous rate and left a contrail that can only be described as donuts on a rope. . .puff - strait contrail - puff etc. There was speculation about an aircraft to follow the SR-71 called Aurora. Later, Popular Mechanics showed a photo of the rocket exhaust with the diamond shaped shock waves saying this is what people saw. Funny, I remember seeing very similar pics of X-planes in the 1950! I'm not a conspiracy nut but maybe Aurora does exist. And don't get me started on Flt. 800! :-) Mike motogozi@yahoo.com better for off subject.

 

[vietvetx2]

Possible explanations:

Picture A: May show a contrail in shadows below the brighter clouds above it in the sunshine.

Picture B: Going back a LOOONG way. It looks something like a ramjet contrail with repetitious compression and exhaust cycles.

Certainly it is not conclusive, but a possible explanation.

First, I am not an aviation engineer, just an aviation enthusiast who drove a Huey in Nam and owned a Cessna 172 doe a few years. However, from what I understand, the old V-1 was a pulse jet with the exhaust pulses as you describe but they were subsonic. The intake cones on the SR-71 would retract once past mach1 and the aircraft basically became a scramjet but did;t leave that donuts on a rope contrails. But then I'm just an old chopper pilot.

 

[vietvetx2]

Too late! You're already an hour ahead of me!!

[crickets chirping....It's a time zone joke, folks!]

New meaning for Zulu time? :-)

 

[Coss]

NSTG8R; About 20 yrs ago my wife & I were traveling W on I-64 between Louisville and St. Louis. It was dusk but looking up you could see two aircraft at high altitude flying in formation flying west. Nothing unusual. Then, one aircraft turned to a heading approximately of 180 and all of a sudden he accelerated at tremendous rate and left a contrail that can only be described as donuts on a rope. . .puff - strait contrail - puff etc. There was speculation about an aircraft to follow the SR-71 called Aurora. Later, Popular Mechanics showed a photo of the rocket exhaust with the diamond shaped shock waves saying this is what people saw. Funny, I remember seeing very similar pics of X-planes in the 1950! I'm not a conspiracy nut but maybe Aurora does exist. And don't get me started on Flt. 800! :-) Mike motogozi@yahoo.com better for off subject.

In the beginning of this thread I had mentioned pulse jet.
Here's something I haven't been able to figure out yet; when the first retired the U2 the SR71 was the replacement for it (it had already been in service for years at that point) but then they rework the U2 and announce they are retiring the SR71. One big problem with that, no one knows how many they built; so when they retired X amount of them; then brought one back for NOAA to use (which you no longer hear about) and they have denied the Aurora is in service. So what did replace the SR71? The public thinks it's been satellites because that's what they were told, but why are they testing the X 47B? What is in service for surveillance? And why haven't they ever announced an aircraft to replace the SR71?

 

[Coss]

Does this match the picture you took?

 

[vietvetx2]

In the beginning of this thread I had mentioned pulse jet.
Here's something I haven't been able to figure out yet; when the first retired the U2 the SR71 was the replacement for it (it had already been in service for years at that point) but then they rework the U2 and announce they are retiring the SR71. One big problem with that, no one knows how many they built; so when they retired X amount of them; then brought one back for NOAA to use (which you no longer hear about) and they have denied the Aurora is in service. So what did replace the SR71? The public thinks it's been satellites because that's what they were told, but why are they testing the X 47B? What is in service for surveillance? And why haven't they ever announced an aircraft to replace the SR71?

The XB47B is being developed as a recon and Strike aircraft for the Navy. Late last year they ran a test where the XB47 was integrated into regular flight ops.; spotting, launching recovering and parking all autonomously.