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F117 flight at the Tonopah Test Range (Sept 2014)

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posted on Oct, 3 2014 @ 01:26 AM
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Flights of the F117 "post retirement" have been documented a few times on video. The question is do they fly out of Groom Lake or the Tonopah Test Range. The plane was observed flying on Sept 29th, though not by me. [Hard to believe, but I walked up Brainwash Butte to find it occupied by three guys with scanners and binoculars.] The plane had been flying before I arrived. However, on Sept 30th, it was flying again. I only had the telescope, so there are no photos of the plane in the air. But I watched it fly over the TTR with binoculars.

Now technically the F117 could also be based at Groom as well. All these photos do is show there are active F117s at the TTR. I use the plural since the plane that flew on the 29th was in a different barn than the one flew on the 30th.

These photos have extreme thermal distortion. The plane was flying around 11AM.

F117 in a "barn" at the Tonopah Test Range

F117 on the ramp prior to takeoff

F117 with drogue chute

F117 returning to barn after flight



edit on 3-10-2014 by gariac because: typo



posted on Oct, 3 2014 @ 01:25 PM
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Another aircraft that's still flying and shouldn't even exist is the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter, but you didn't hear that from me.



posted on Oct, 4 2014 @ 12:24 PM
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With all the military budget cuts, perhaps unretiring them was somehow cost effective or they upgraded them in some way. Last I knew, after the crash in Serbia it was no longer completely "invisible" on the radar.



posted on Oct, 4 2014 @ 12:30 PM
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a reply to: kinstler

They're testing skin upgrades and radar systems from what I've heard. They aren't operational, and its only a couple aircraft.



posted on Oct, 6 2014 @ 02:06 AM
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Cool! My understanding was that to maintain the separation of operations at Groom everyone was on lock down in their hangars once a test object was outside and until it was out of sight. To reduce too much disturbances to other projects they try to keep the number of active projects at the Base low. This could make sense with the f117s if there are only a couple flying but since they've been papped at TTR I guess they're all flying out of there

edit on 6/10/14 by gfad because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 13 2014 @ 03:29 PM
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At the request of David Cenciotti of "The Aviationist", I supplied the pictures for his article "New Photos of the F-117 Black Jet flying over Tonopah Test Range in 2014"

I took these from Brainwash Butte back in April of 2014.

theaviationist.com...



posted on Oct, 13 2014 @ 04:06 PM
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I was near EAFB a year or so ago and I swear I saw a YF-23 flying (with a couple of F-16 escorts). It did a seriously odd angle maneuver after take off. Thrust vectoring?
Why would that one even be flying? I know it was a capable platform, but surely the day has passed for it.
Unless I was mistaken and it was just something that looked a lot like it...




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