Just saying hi...

I'm a retired test pilot with many thousands of hours of pilot in command time. I was stationed at Edwards AFB, contracted to the DoD...

I've seen and expreienced a wide variety of things in my time and I might be of some help with questions...

Thanks for bringing me aboard!!

Welcome to ATS, CTO. I look forward to your contributions

Welcome to ATS, its great to have you on board!

Welcome and enjoy your long stay here at the great ATS!

Welcome !

Have a nice time and enjoy your stay !

Welcome aboard CTO.

Your real-world experiences that you share will be of great value to ATS.

I look forward to reading what you have to say. Welcome to ATS.

Thanks, folks...

I'm not a UFO fanatic, although I have seen a number of objects in the sky that I was not able to easily explain or explain at all!

I DO believe that life exists elsewhere in our universe but I DON'T believe that we've been visited... There simply isn't enough hard evidence that LGM have been here... Of course, there is a lot of lore and confusion surrounding the issue and I'm not closed to the possibility of alien contact... I just need proof!

CTO hello and WELCOME!

It is nice to have a test pilot on the board!

Have fun exploring and learning.......and don't forget to share with us all your opinins!

Welcome to ATS, CTO. Glad to meet you and hope to hearing about some of those interesting experiences of yours.

Welcome to the lunatic asylum.....i mean ATS!

Hope you enjoy the site as much as the rest of us do and hope to see you around the boards!

Mic

Always nice to see new people join the fray.

You mentioned seeing things that you could not explain. I would be curious as to how you would describe what you saw, and how you reported what you observed. (and what response you got from any of these reports)

And again.... Welcome to ATS, the most interesting forum on the net.

Ya' know... I've seen unexplaineds in a variety of locations and times...

One of the most memorable was when I was just a baby pilot, building time by teaching others to fly... I was doing night take offs and landings with a student and while on downwind leg ( the part of the traffic pattern parallel to the runway) I spotted what appeared to navigation lights off to the west... I estimated that it would take the closing aircraft somewhere around four to six minutes to reach my vicinity and even at that the approaching craft would be well above my altitude...

Less than a minute later, after rolling wings level on base leg I caught sight of the craft approaching, very rapidly and co-altitude... I took the aircraft from my student, rolled hard left and pulled the bird toward the ground, a risky maneuver since I was a mere four to five hundred feet above the dirt...

The object passed over us, pretty much blacking out the background of stars and hauled butt toward the east... I didn't notice any noise but that may be attributable to the natural noise level of the little bird we were flying...

I was unable to raise RAPCON from my altitude and position but I did place a phone call to the tower facility when I got on the ground...

They had not painted any unusual activity in the local airspace at the time of my encounter but that may well have been do to the low altitude of my aircraft and the craft that passed over us...

Could I explain it? Nope... I thought it might have been a C-130 from a local military facility but I was unable to prove that...

So, this on went down in my memory as a real unknown, a real exciting unknown...

Hey, welcome. I'm new too.

Then let me offer my welcome to you as well!!

I've only been in this organization for a few days but I've found it generally friendly... Lot's of folks with no fear of offering an opinion or thoughts...