Where Have All The Planes Gone?

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by NightGypsy

 

I covered that in the OP of the "seasonal" thread. Lousy weather means people aren't outside as much and low level clouds conceal the high stuff.

edit on 7/30/2011 by Phage because: (no reason given)

The effect of obscuration is discussed in the Minnis paper:

www-pm.larc.nasa.gov...

The graphs clearly show a significant effect of obscuration in the winter, but it just reduces the size of the winter peak (without changing the summer values), and does not create a dip, so I'm thinking your christmas dip has some more human cause.

reply to post by Uncinus

Yes. But my "study" did not involve a database of hourly WX obs. It would represent more of a database of subjective impressions.

I think the New Year anomaly goes something like this:

"Brrr. Snowy but I have to go to the store before it gets dark. Hmmm cloudy out." Not going to notice much.

"Ah, nice spring day. Think I'll go for a walk. Dang, it would be sunny if it weren't for them danged chemtrails!"

Incidentally, I hope our OP (Pshea) returns at some point to review these recent comments. I would like to inquire of our most outspoken advocate of the September Clues "no planes, no victims, T.V. fakery" theories by suggesting that maybe the planes emitting the chemtrails he previously witnessed were holographic images.

Sorry, Pshea, I couldn't resist.

Originally posted by NightGypsy
reply to post by shagreen heart

 

can't help but think about the NASA employee safety measures they sent out recently... and honestly it worries me a bit. i have a pile of saving and i'm honestly contemplating spending it all on survival gear that i've always had my eyes on.

Hi, Shagreen, thanks for your post. The only thing is, I don't understand how you've managed to make a correlation between chemtrails and the Nasa employee safety measures. This kind of thing bothers me because it can result in people jumping on a bandwagon where there is no need for it.

hi night gypsy. i know that the correlation between the two is an irrational jump in conclusions, , but i just thought that the nasa safety tapes, and the whistleblower who said that nasa employees want to tell the population the "truth" but aren't allowed, and that they will try to slip clues into the last missions, kind of had my imagination going, and i realize that. i'm comfortable admitting it though, because i am quite aware what a loose leap that is on the logical front. my whole thing was i don't remember NOT seeing chemtrails in the sky in any recent part of my life. (and just so my terms are clear and there is no equivocation, when i say chemtrail, i just mean a contrail that doesn't dissipate completely after more than half a mile of the plane, and also flattens out and hangs in the sky as a huge lined mist that doesn't fully dissipate from the same place in the sky until after the sun has set). i thought it was a little strange, and was just looking at two pieces of data for insight into the future, what everyone does. and again i admit it is and sounds silly, but it was something that i felt like at least mentioning, and if i'm too afraid to speak my mind, i'm wasting it.

reply to post by Uncinus


Fresno, Ca.

reply to post by shagreen heart


Or maybe the conditions for contrail formation, 30,000 or 40,000 feet above you aren't at perfect for contrail formation right now?

reply to post by Indigo88


I'm in Los Angeles, I've not seen any either. I think it's just the weather. It was like this for periods during the last two summers.

It rained today, which was quite unusual for this time of year, but not unheard of. Unusual weather happens all the time.

Originally posted by adeclerk
reply to post by shagreen heart

 

Or maybe the conditions for contrail formation, 30,000 or 40,000 feet above you aren't at perfect for contrail formation right now?

this thread is where have all the planes gone, not contrails, and like i said, i don't see any planes (which cause chem/contrails) in the sky either. and they aren't hard to spot in blue cloudless skies, even that high up. anyone can still hear them as well.

however, to add a bit of an update, they've been a lot more active recently, not as bad as i've seen it in the past, but back when i posted in this thread originally, we were NOT in the stifling heat wave we are now. but at that altitude i really don't think it matters what the temp is down here... and i've seen them pollute summer skies year after year before, i'm fairly positive it's not the heat.

Originally posted by shagreen heart

Originally posted by adeclerk
reply to post by shagreen heart

 

Or maybe the conditions for contrail formation, 30,000 or 40,000 feet above you aren't at perfect for contrail formation right now?

this thread is where have all the planes gone, not contrails, and like i said, i don't see any planes (which cause chem/contrails) in the sky either. and they aren't hard to spot in blue cloudless skies, even that high up. anyone can still hear them as well.

Actually it IT hard to spot them in blue cloudless skies. Because of:

1) Empty Field Myopia – The eye, when looking at a featureless field of vision, will focus just a few feet in front of you, so the planes will be out of focus.
2) Saccadic Masking – When your eye moves from one point to another, you don’t see anything while the eye is in motion.
3) Small Planes, Big Sky – a plane is about 1/100th to 1/10,000 the size of a contrail, making it proportionally hard to spot.
4) Invisible planes – Atmospheric conditions and the color of the planes can make some planes blend in with the sky so well that they are essentially invisible, or very indistinct.

See here for more detail, and references:

contrailscience.com...

Originally posted by Uncinus

Originally posted by shagreen heart

Originally posted by adeclerk
reply to post by shagreen heart

 

Or maybe the conditions for contrail formation, 30,000 or 40,000 feet above you aren't at perfect for contrail formation right now?

this thread is where have all the planes gone, not contrails, and like i said, i don't see any planes (which cause chem/contrails) in the sky either. and they aren't hard to spot in blue cloudless skies, even that high up. anyone can still hear them as well.

Actually it IT hard to spot them in blue cloudless skies. Because of:

1) Empty Field Myopia – The eye, when looking at a featureless field of vision, will focus just a few feet in front of you, so the planes will be out of focus.
2) Saccadic Masking – When your eye moves from one point to another, you don’t see anything while the eye is in motion.
3) Small Planes, Big Sky – a plane is about 1/100th to 1/10,000 the size of a contrail, making it proportionally hard to spot.
4) Invisible planes – Atmospheric conditions and the color of the planes can make some planes blend in with the sky so well that they are essentially invisible, or very indistinct.

See here for more detail, and references:

contrailscience.com...

it's really not hard at all to see them. i'm not saying anything you're saying is wrong, you're 100% right, but i've never had more than an ounce of trouble spotting a big jet liner 40k feet up in the air, they stick out like a sore thumb. i have over 20/20 vision, and my job requires me to have brilliant eye sight as well, and being an artist helps quite a bit too. and the ones that i always find the most striking are the big jumbo jets way up where we are talking about, that leave no contrail. they way it used to be. i remember gazing up at countless planes when i was a kid. when we could hear them we all yelled PLANE and tried to be the first to find it, and i'm talking about the big airline planes, not some little hobbyist planes. they left no trail. i remember it was inerestin to watch their little white tails behind them but they didn't stretch out more than an inch (from the ground) before dissapearing, and i always noticed it and thought it was a little interesting. so what is the difference? you didn't comment on the temp up there, but you did comment on the temperature on the earth, which really shouldn't affect how they dissapate. and how can some completely dissapear no more than a mile behind the plane while others absolutely pollute the sky for the entire day? i'm not some hayseed, i've watched it a million times, i see the plane initially flying, see the long contrail, go about my business for the day, and its still there 10 hours later, some don't even completely dissapear until after nightfall. it's not a temp thing, so what's the difference between these two scenarios, because i'm not mistaking what i'm seeing.

Originally posted by shagreen heart

it's really not hard at all to see them. i'm not saying anything you're saying is wrong, you're 100% right, but i've never had more than an ounce of trouble spotting a big jet liner 40k feet up in the air, they stick out like a sore thumb. i have over 20/20 vision, and my job requires me to have brilliant eye sight as well, and being an artist helps quite a bit too.

I really don't think you are seeing every plane that flies over you at 40,000 feet. That 7.5 miles away if directly overhead - which is only is for a minute or two. Most of the time the potentially visible traffic at 40,000 feet is 10-50 miles away (measured directly). You see it when it's leaving a contrail. You don't see it when it is not.

Where do you live? Maybe there's some on-line flight tracker that could show you what is overhead, then you could try to see it.

Try Wolfram Alpha, for example:

www.wolframalpha.com...

Originally posted by shagreen heart
[this thread is where have all the planes gone, not contrails, and like i said, i don't see any planes (which cause chem/contrails) in the sky either. and they aren't hard to spot in blue cloudless skies, even that high up. anyone can still hear them as well.

sometimes you will hear them...sometimes you won't.

If seeing them is a problem then the answer is more magnification - have a look at what this guy uses, and the results he gets - he can photograph planes over 200km away in ideal conditions.

www.skystef.be...

And it isn't all that expensive either - the 10" telescope he uses retails for about US$600, and a slighly smaller 8" model for about US$400

Originally posted by Uncinus

Originally posted by shagreen heart

it's really not hard at all to see them. i'm not saying anything you're saying is wrong, you're 100% right, but i've never had more than an ounce of trouble spotting a big jet liner 40k feet up in the air, they stick out like a sore thumb. i have over 20/20 vision, and my job requires me to have brilliant eye sight as well, and being an artist helps quite a bit too.

I really don't think you are seeing every plane that flies over you at 40,000 feet. That 7.5 miles away if directly overhead - which is only is for a minute or two. Most of the time the potentially visible traffic at 40,000 feet is 10-50 miles away (measured directly). You see it when it's leaving a contrail. You don't see it when it is not.

Where do you live? Maybe there's some on-line flight tracker that could show you what is overhead, then you could try to see it.

Try Wolfram Alpha, for example:

www.wolframalpha.com...

i only see them usually if i'm looking or hear them, i certainly don't see them all. i've seen some that leave absolutely no contrail, which i really didn't understand anyway i'm not saying i have superhuman eyesight, but its really not that hard if try. seeing/not seeing the planes isn't really want i want to discuss though.

But no matter how good of eyesight anyone has, its impossible to discern from 6 miles vertical and however many horizontal, that different aircraft are at the same altitude. I dont know how many times i have seen chemtrailers claim that they know the aircraft were at the same altitude, just from visual observation. Sorry, you cant tell that at all.

Its one thing if you see two F-16s flying in formation at low altitude. But if you have different sizes of airliners, on different routings, its just physically impossible to look at them and determine their altitudes from your eyes

double post

Originally posted by shagreen heart

i remember it was inerestin to watch their little white tails behind them but they didn't stretch out more than an inch (from the ground) before dissapearing, and i always noticed it and thought it was a little interesting. so what is the difference? you didn't comment on the temp up there, but you did comment on the temperature on the earth, which really shouldn't affect how they dissapate. and how can some completely dissapear no more than a mile behind the plane while others absolutely pollute the sky for the entire day? i'm not some hayseed, i've watched it a million times, i see the plane initially flying, see the long contrail, go about my business for the day, and its still there 10 hours later, some don't even completely dissapear until after nightfall. it's not a temp thing, so what's the difference between these two scenarios, because i'm not mistaking what i'm seeing.

Why isn't it a temperature thing?

The basic conditions that decide whether a contrail forms in the first instance, and then how long it lasts for, are temperature and humidity - if it is very cold and very humid then you get lots of long lasting contrails, because all the water generated by the engines combusting fuel can't "disolve" into the atmosphere.

and they wil remain until the conditions change enough for them to disolve - just like clouds, which are, of course, also just water.

If it is a bit warmer, or a bit less humid, then then might form but disolve fairly quickly.

And if it is neither cold enough nor humid enough then they will not form at all because the water disolves before they can.

In essence they aer clouds - some parts of the sky have cloud in them because the conditions are right for clouds there in terms of humidity, temperature and whatever else is required. but 100 feet away might be clear air - because teh conditions 100 feet away are not correct or the cloud to form.

And some clouds last a long time...while others disolve at various speeds - again all depending upon the atmospheric conditions where they are.

Now that's a pretty simple explaination - I think I saw a formula for contrail formation once that had 20 or 30 terms in it to try to cover all possible variables for contrail formation - somehwree in between is pages like this one - Calculations of Aircraft Contrail Formation Critical Temperatures

I note also on this article they publish "Appleman charts for various engines" - showing slight differences in c onditions for high, low and no-bypass engines to form contrails.

See also en.wikipedia.org...

I see ants on the ground...many of them. But I cannot see all of them crawling on the ground..
You may think I am being silly, but try it some time.

The point I'm making is that because you see a number of them, does not mean you see all of them.