Secret Project off the Coast of California?

I have been really looking at everything on this site for the last week or so, and I have been having a great time. I have never been particularly conspiracy minded, but I love science and read several periodicals a month. All of this UFO and other conspiracy stuff made me remember something I thought was quite odd in the Feb 2007 issue of "Discover" (which of course came out in January.)

On page 22 for those of you that have it, there is a graphic done by an artist named Aaron Koblin that shows flight paths. Labeled as "6" on the printed page there is something the article calls "Fantasy Island" planes landing and taking off where there should be none. The artist says that it is highly unlikely there is a data glitch as "authorities" suggest. Koblin says devices on the planes themselves report the data, but he admits it may be possible that it is a glitch. Here is a link to an animated graphic of this project he did. "Fantasy Island" is not marked on this, but if you go midway up California, and then out to the left of the coast line a way, you will see just a few planes landing and taking off sort of out of the traffic areas. They are color coded and these are likely cargo or 747's according to his coding scheme.

users.design.ucla.edu...

Hmmmm. Actually, I guess it probably wouldnt be a US project. All of the planes that seem to be landing there seem to be coming in from the West. Another interesting thing though is the traffic picks up on "Fantasy Island" right when the US traffic gets slower.

[edit on 4-2-2007 by Illusionsaregrander]

[edit on 4-2-2007 by Illusionsaregrander]

That is really interesting. I thought you were talking about Hawaii for a while there, but when I watched it again I saw the anomaly you were talking about.
There is no island or anything that comes above the surface of the ocean there. Nothing.
But yet a good 20-25 aircraft fly to and disappear at the exact same spot.
Also, I was going to say that no flights left from the mystery spot, but there is one right when you click play, and another couple of faint ones later.

How could data glitches account for all that? But then again, I am sure there is a simple eplination for all this.

edit: Close up.


[edit on 4/2/2007 by watch_the_rocks]

Given the location of the "glitch", and the fact that there is no island, "Fantasy" or otherwise at that location, I would venture to guess that we're seeing the flight operations of an Aircraft Carrier.

That is, of course Only a guess; I'm not very knowledgeable with regards to naval operations.

And if it is/was a carrier, I'd have absolutely no idea who's carrier it was.

Nice, thanks for posting that Illusionsaregrander. That's a really cool chart to look at regardless. I think Bhadhidar might have nailed it with the "glitch" carrier idea. That could possibly be why the "authorities" wrote it off.

On the other hand, can carrier based/landing aircraft really fly that far? Some of the flightlines appear almost as long as the continental US.

Thats pretty wierd. If this is based on FAA data would military aircraft be included? If not then the carrier idea can be discarded.

A "glitch" is also highly unlikely!

Are we absolutely positive there is nothing there?

Im going to keep and eye on this thread!!

may i offer a suggestion...?


i believe it is caused by the fact that they only supply part of the flight data, so yes you may see a plane take of from mainland USA but you wont see it landing say in japan...so it makes it seem as if the plane just dissapears/lands..

just my humble opinion

thanks

snoopyuk

Originally posted by snoopyuk
i believe it is caused by the fact that they only supply part of the flight data, so yes you may see a plane take of from mainland USA but you wont see it landing say in japan...so it makes it seem as if the plane just dissapears/lands..

That cant be the answer, firstly the dots dont just disappear off the edge of the western edge of the image, they start and end in one point. Secondly the dot isnt the most westerly point in the image that can be idenitified, Hawaii is clearly visible and the dot is actually east of that.

I think the suggestion that it could be an aircraft carrier is a good one, but whose carrier is a good question as the planes seem to approach from the west. It is a cool project the guy did in any event, and I do love the graphic, when I first saw it in Discover magazine they only had a picture, seeing it in motion is really nice.

What not odd is the cover up two step they all seem to be trained on.

Well it's certainly interesting. But the OP states the article made mention of the fact that the color codes indicate either cargo planes or 747's.

Can a 747 land and take off from an air craft carrier? DOn't the need a heck of a lot more runway than what is provided by an aircraft carrier?

Just curious.

Spiderj

is it possible to get a near real time satellite image of the area from something like Google Maps?


now, there's been strange ?sonic booms? frequently reported as coming somewhere off the California coast, near San Diego...
would there be any connection?

or is this OP phantom airstrip 100s of miles off the CA coast?

Originally posted by Spiderj
Well it's certainly interesting. But the OP states the article made mention of the fact that the color codes indicate either cargo planes or 747's.

No a 747 cannot take off from an Aircraft carrier. A C-130 or a U-2 have, but the 747 is way to big and cannot be catapulted off the deck. (The C-130 and U-2 did not need the catapult)

Color codes or transponder codes? transponder codes can be changed easily. Most ATC radars do not do a skin paint but rather read the transponder codes which they assign to each aircraft. In the chopter when we transition from one controlled space to another we often change our code and ATC is dependant on us to state type of aircraft.

Thanks for clearing that up FredT...as usual ya done come through son!

Thanks,

Spiderj

Originally posted by St Udio
now, there's been strange ?sonic booms? frequently reported as coming somewhere off the California coast, near San Diego...
would there be any connection?

or is this OP phantom airstrip 100s of miles off the CA coast?

I was wondering the same thing myself. I wonder if this is where those are coming from. The fact that these are all 747 and cargo plane seems funny too.

Strange days...

Originally posted by Bhadhidar
Given the location of the "glitch", and the fact that there is no island, "Fantasy" or otherwise at that location, I would venture to guess that we're seeing the flight operations of an Aircraft Carrier.

I was going to suggest the same. As for whose carrier, I would guess it is, in fact, the carriers based in San Diego. Remember that before they come into port, all the planes fly off and land at the naval base. The reverse happens when they leave. That explanation makes sense to me anyway.

I would venture a guess and say that the "Phantasy Island" off of the US West Coast is in fact a high altitude intersection point where trans-pacific flights start their process of entering or leaving US airspace. The fact that they disappear there is probably due to lack of radar coverage or incomplete flight plan data for source info.

Originally posted by Bhadhidar
Given the location of the "glitch", and the fact that there is no island, "Fantasy" or otherwise at that location, I would venture to guess that we're seeing the flight operations of an Aircraft Carrier.

That is, of course Only a guess; I'm not very knowledgeable with regards to naval operations.

And if it is/was a carrier, I'd have absolutely no idea who's carrier it was.

My thoughts exactly.
But, if not a carrier, well... yeesh.

Pretty interesting, but to me, it looks like the radar, or what's ever tracking them just stops. The planes that land look like they "explode", or have some kind of spark looking thing if you look closely. The Fantasy Island ones just stop abruptly.

Also, on the close up version, you can see similar patterns at the bottom right. They just stop in the ocean.

On Google Earth, at these coordinates, I get a patch of earth, with no name, no flags. It's about where the Flight Pattern Link showed the anomaly.

43 deg 06'16.03" N
142 deg 17'26.59" W

Anybody want to check, and see if it is just a glitch?

Thanks.

Illusion:

Do you happen to have a source of the data/graphic? I backed through the UCLA site in the link but found nothing other than more unrelated 'design' graphic examples.

I'm asking because the graphic shows an event date of March 19, 2005. If we can get another graphic made on any other date we would be able to check the aircraft carrier theory quite definitively since the carrier likely would not be stationery and would have moved to a different location over time.

Even better would be several dates.

I also checked a few other sites that show dynamic air traffic but saw nothing unusual off the west coast.

Finally, I did some analysis with a few GIS packages (Geographic Information Systems w/hi-res satellite imagery, etc) that I use regularly in my work, and found nothing in that region of the ocean that even hints at a solid surface upon which aircraft operations can be conducted.

Intriguing find - I sure would like to get my hands on the source data... Even plotting a fix/coordinates would help narrow the search considerably. Can you offer any insight in this regard? Anyone else?

Thanks for the post...

[edit on 2/5/2007 by Outrageo]