Originally posted by pirateman
a. The lack of flicker, blinking or movement for 17+ minutes
Why should the lights flicker, they are not strobes, and as I have already shown in the picture of the aircraft wingtip the strobes point aft, not
forward. You might get some slight twinkling from atmospheric distortion, the same as we get with stars, but no reason for their to be any obvious
flickering.
The reason why this would appear to remain stationary is the same reason that I and other posters have mentioned:
(sorry that did not come out as clear as I drew it)
Florida is extremely low in altitude, we used to set our altimeters to 13 feet above sea level flying out of airports on my side of the state. So an
approaching aircraft (in my drawing above, I put one coming in from across the ocean and one from the Northern US), will begin to slow and descend for
final approach from their cruising altitudes/speeds well before entering the TCA for final approach into the airport. I believe that the approach
speed for most narrow body aircraft is somewhere around 180Knots. If you saw this aircraft, especially out over the water and through a zoom lens,
you could observe it standing still in the air for an extremely long amount of time. The aircraft is of course not stationary, but the movement is
heading in your direction, so it appears to hover from your perspective. In reality its an optical illusion.
Originally posted by pirateman
b. The object did not get closer to me before it banked NORTH/SOUTH
It moves in coloration with commands that it receives from ATC as to when it is to turn to enter the TCA for approach. The hand off has to be at a
certain altitude, position, and speed to allow the next controller (approach control) to know where to expect it to enter his airspace and compensate
for it. Approach pattern factors are determined by runway positions, ground obstacles, weather, construction, noise dissipation rules, etc.
Originally posted by pirateman
c.Was the pilot drunk? maybe he forgot where the airport was, why would he go north then immediately south, and how did he turn his plane around in
~10 seconds?
I don't see this in the video at all, it appears that the aircraft is approaching the camera, then does a bank to head off less then 90 degrees in
another direction. Why don't you draw us a map showing your rough position (keep your exact location private) then what you feel the aircraft did in
correlation to your position. I am just not seeing a 180 degree turn in that video, especially with all the camera movement.
Looks exactly like a plane with his nose a bit more to the left to me:
[edit on 11/6/2008 by defcon5]