Doctor CamNC4Me wrote: ↑Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:32 pm
eta: Hey Dr. W,
You've spent a lot of time in the air. Have you ever seen anything that made you question your sanity?
- Doc
Hey Doc,
Yes. Twice.
The first was a high tension power line directly in front of us after taking off from an airstrip in the mountains of Northern California not far from Mt. Shasta. We were new to the airplane and this was our first time taking it off from an airport at an elevation of higher than about 400 feet. The plane lifted off fine in ground effect but, starting at 3,000 feet or so, didn't want to climb out at a rate that would get us over the wires. With my wife screaming, "Don't you dare!", we ended up flying underneath the power line before climb-out.
My wife swore that, as soon as we landed next time, she would never fly with me again. When she calmed down, I convinced her to take flying lessons instead. I questioned my sanity for waiting until the hottest part of the day (highest density altitude) to take off in a heavily loaded aircraft, from an unfamiliar high altitude airstrip, with a power line at one end and a tall trees at the other. So did my wife, so she learned to fly herself.
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In the second incident it was the UFO I didn't see that made me question my sanity. A pilot friend and I were inbound over Lake Washington to Renton Airport near Seattle at night when the tower instructed us to switch to the frequency for Seattle Center (ATC). This was unusual because we were VFR and not under ATC control. We contacted ATC. ATC came back on the radio, gave us transponder code for identification, and asked us for our altitude. We responded and got a "Stand by" - all very mysterious.
ATC came back and said that they had reports of unidentified lights in the sky near our position at an unknown altitude. They asked our aircraft type and instructed us to make a 360 turn to see if we could get a visual. We were in a high wing aircraft and so would have a hard time seeing anything directly above us. We did as instructed, saw nothing, and expected to be handed back to Renton tower for clearance to land. No such luck.
Seattle Center came back and instructed us to make a climbing turn to a new altitude and have another look. It was dark. It was late, and we were both tired and in no mood to go chasing little green men. If you are in a high wing aircraft and are told that there might be traffic above that you cannot see, the last thing you want to do is climb. We complied - cautiously.
Still nothing. At this point, ATC advised us that earlier they had a unidentified radar return from above Mercer Island that had disappeared. Oh great. Now we were flying around in the dark, crossing paths with unidentified radar targets and seeing nothing. Things in the cockpit were getting a bit tense.
Seattle Center then vectored us over Mercer Island to look for the lights (at least no more climbing). Again nothing. Looking straight ahead out of the cockpit it was pitch black. If the target had gone dark ahead of us, we would have little chance of seeing it before the collision. One more pass. Still nothing. Our imaginations were starting to get the better of us. Finally, Seattle Center thanked us, wished us a good evening and handed us off to Renton tower, which had apparently been monitoring our communication with ATC (slow night) and gave us a much appreciated straight in approach.
My friend was a veteran pilot and knew one of the guys who worked in the tower. As we taxied to parking, he jumped out of plane with the prop still turning and headed for the tower. He would not be able to get access to the control room but could talk with them in private on a landline from inside the building. (It was well understood that one did not say the word "UFO" over open channel aircraft radios in those days.) He returned as I was loading the last of our gear from the trip into the car.
He explained that earlier in the evening there had been reports to the police of lights hovering above Lake Washington. Things escalated when Seattle Center contacted Renton tower (at the south end of Lake Washington) saying that earlier they seen an unidentified target in the area and asking Renton if they could see any lights in the sky in the direction of Mercer Island. The tower didn't see anything, but advised ATC they had an inbound aircraft that might be willing to take a look. That was us.
It turned out that the police and ATC had an idea of what was going on but ATC had failed to mention it to us that evening, leaving us to assume a different kind of UFO and question our sanity for flying around in the dark looking for it. (Air traffic controllers are trained to say as little as possible over the radio and only what is required to get the job done.)
Some kids on Mercer Island had taped up the top hole in plastic dry cleaning bags, taped them to tin foil plates, put small cans of Sterno on the plates, and lit them up to made hot air balloons that glowed in the dark. Tin foil plates served (unintentionally) as radar reflectors giving transient radar returns when close enough together and high enough above the ground. (Radars give target range and direction, but not altitude. They do not have enough angular resolution to distinguish between targets that are close together so these contraptions appeared now and then as a single target.)
The main concern was that the balloons would drop down into a wooded residential area before the Sterno burned out and start a fire. These contraptions were almost certainly below us the whole time. From our altitude, however, we could not distinguish them from all the other light sources on Mercer Island. Another UFO sighting, with radar contact no less, explained.