Nellis UFO video

I haven't looked at this page for a long time:
www.aenigmatis.com...
Reading the footnotes, it appears the author updates it from time to time. At some point the original Nellis video was uploaded to the old Google Video website.
video.google.com...

I'm pretty sure this is a weather balloon (no really!) since it just floats around kind of haphazardly. The website footnotes claim the imagery is from a cinetheodolite. of which the TTR does have many. But I believe the video is from a Roland. At one point the author agreed with me, but seems to have changed his mind.
Roland

My recollection is the sighting coincided with an exercise on the range rather than a TTR test. In fact, towards the end of the video, you can hear the phrase "non-player", meaning whatever they were tracking wasn't part of the training exercise.

The cinetheodolites back then were film, which was subsequently scanned to produce a very high resolution video. The video in the test looks like garden variety NTSC imagery consistent with the Cohu camera use with the Roland.

BTW a search of the video link indicates this video was never discussed on ATS.

reply to post by gariac

BTW a search of the video link indicates this video was never discussed on ATS.

You are mistaken.
www.google.com...

I have never thought there was anything in particularly intriguing about the video.

reply to post by gariac


I always thought it moves kind of like one of these:



Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) for ballistic missile defence.

reply to post by Phage


Silly me, I used the ATS search feature. ;-)

As it turns out, the google video is a bit clearer than the youtube video. Maybe that is why the webpage that analysed it linked to the google video. So this post isn't a waste.

Still looks like a balloon to me. And what with all that alien garbage in the other thread?

reply to post by Grifter81


Hey, I want one of those!

I am pretty sure the TV camera would pick up all that rocket activity. Black and white cameras have near IR sensitivity. I do see the resemblance.

Thank you Gariac for bringing this video to our attention. I always wondered about what it really was, I'm not sure if this really is "just" a balloon but that's just my opinion.

Originally posted by gariac
My recollection is the sighting coincided with an exercise on the range rather than a TTR test. In fact, towards the end of the video, you can hear the phrase "non-player", meaning whatever they were tracking wasn't part of the training exercise.

My question is why would they start a project (like the proposed weather balloon) during a training ecercise? Wouldn't it be too dangerous or simply not efficient enough to have two in nature different projects on the same day?

The object in the video looks exactly like one I saw at Edwards Air Force Base on 12 March 1998 while observing preparations for the first X-38 free flight from the NASA Dryden mission control room. During the final run of the B-52 toward the Precision Impact Range Area, the X-38 drop had to be aborted because of an unidentified flying object hovering over the landing zone. In the Long-Range Optics, the object appeared as a cluster of white globular nodes that descended and struck the ground a few minutes later. The camera magnification was sufficient to make it clear that it was a weather balloon cluster.

reply to post by gariac


Your right, the rocket activity would probably be picked up, although the background seems light enough for it perhaps not to be seen?

I don't think its the same thing but the movements are similar, like it is under some kind of forceful control with a system that doesn't compensate for directional thrust fast enough, if you know what I mean

Well we know the TTR can launch weather balloons. Note the long shadows in the photo. These balloons are usually launched at stupid O clock so that the flight will be as vertical as possible. But I think at the official weather stations, in this case Desert Rock Airstrip, they do two launches a day. [TBD]

If it was a weather balloon, there would be telemetry to go with it. The balloon caries a radiosonde. So if everyone fessed up, this wouldn't be a mystery. I can see a few scenarios here. One is the USAF holds a meeting, determines it is a weather balloon, then concludes "One thing we are not going to do today is blame another UFO sighting on a weather balloon! Just say 'No comment.'" Another scenario, and perhaps more likely, is some yahoos decided to launch a balloon. I only say this because I found a number of balloons tied together with chemical glow lights attached, i.e. a DIY UFO. These was in free territory (obviously) a bit west of Coyote Summit. A good location to create a hoax UFO.

Regarding releasing a balloon during an exercise, it doesn't seem to be the smartest thing in the world, but there are requirements to get this data. Note that the west side of the range is "red" (enemy) territory. There shouldn't be much going on in the way of dog fights ("furballs"). The red and blue team tend to mix it up closer to the eastern border of the restricted airspace. So air traffic on the west side isn't as hectic, giving the pilots time to look for hazards without guns or missiles attached.. This presumes the exercise was a flag. If it was Weapons School. then the west side of the range is more active because there are more live bombing sites there.

I will dig up some photo of a radiosonde I recovered in the hills east of the ET Highway. It was very old. Modern radiosondes have tracking so that they can be recovered. The sequence is basically you launch the balloon, as the balloon rises it gets larger because the air pressure on the outside is reduced with increasing altitude, until the balloon finally bursts. The modern radiosonde has a parachute, so the instrumentation can be recovered. There are mailing instructions on the outside should a private individual find the radiosonde. In the case of the one I found, it was so junky nobody would want it back. It was probably in the desert for a decade. The hills in Central Nevada are so desolate that if you go a bit off the beaten path, it is likely no person has been there in years. Some of the mountains have log books that indicate how rarely they are climbed.

This is the barometer portion of a radiosonde that I found east of the ET highway.

No transmitter, balloon remnants, etc. I think the radiosonde made a hard landing. ;-)
I have a larger photo, but you will need a djvu viewer
www.lazygranch.com...