TLO OVER SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

TLO OVER SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
At about 3:15 am Sunday morning, the 6th of December, 1992, residents of Bay Park and Pacific Beach, areas of San Diego, California, were awakened by the lights in their homes flashing on and off and appliances, radios and television sets turning themselves on and off, although the wall and unit switches were turned off!
Residents reported a bright, glowing light in the sky behind the low clouds, pulsating in perfect sync to the flashing of the lights in the community.
One resident said she could not see a shape to the light; she only saw a bright pulsating glow in the clouds.
Nearby, a power pole began to arc, burning the pole and 265 feet of underground cable, turning the surrounding sand and soil to glass.
San Diego Gas and Electric engineers were unable to explain how or why lights and appliances could turn on when the wall switches were turned off and the circuits not completed. They suggested the residents might have been mistaken. Asked again, the residents all insisted the wall switches were turned off! Engineer Ed Hedricks said such a phenomena might occur under some remarkable conditions but not with SDG&E's system.
December 6th, 7th and 8th was a period of intense military activity at San Diego and nearby Camp Pendleton as Navy and Marine units geared up to deploy to Somalia.
It had been raining for two days, with thunder and lightning, and some flooding in low areas. No one offered a suggestion that the storm caused any of the observed phenomena.
An asteroid passed within 2 million miles of Earth during the same general period, hardly a near miss that would cause the observed electrical phenomena. (The same asteroid passes Earth every four years).
On Tuesday, December 8, 1992, two sharp sonic booms were heard and felt in San Diego. San Diego is approximately 300 miles southwest of Groom Lake, Nevada where CIA's super secret spy plane, Aurora, is based, certainly well within the sonic wave area of a plane decelerating to subsonic flight from the Pacific Ocean side of California or from Mexico and South America. San Diego is also about 50 statute miles west southwest of Anza/Borrego, an area of intense UFO and TLO activity.
I fly near and over that area on occasion. It is remote, hostile and, in many places, inaccessible. It is called the "Borrego Badlands" for good reason. It would be a perfect place to hide a UFO.
As of this writing, I am trying to determine if the San Diego UFO/TLO was recorded on radar. Although both San Diego and Los Angles radar operators could have seen it, and tower personnel at NAS North Island should have seen it, it is possible that it may not have been recorded for one reason or another. If the UFO was employing masking devices (ECM), it would not be visible to radar.
On the other hand, it might not be visible even if not employing masking devices. During a recent flight to the Chino, California Planes Of Fame Museum, we heard a helicopter pilot on our frequency being denied transition of the Los Angeles TCA because the radar operator could not get a signature on his aircraft! Whether because of its size, heading or altitude, the helicopter was invisible to LA's radar! They routed him around the area and he wasn't real happy about it.
If an aircraft that is trying to be seen can't be seen on the most sophisticated commercial radar on the west coast, an aircraft that doesn't want to be seen will never be seen!
It is interesting to note that a lot of military activity was occurring over the weekend and into Monday and Tuesday. UFO sightings and activity increase during such periods, leading one to suspect that UFOs and TLOs might be part of the military maneuvers.
But exactly what part, no one is telling. And if a military weapon is capable of causing that much damage accidentally, think how much it might cause on purpose! The electrical phenomena caused by this UFO is precisely that of a craft surrounded by an anti-mass field. Does the military or one of the intelligence agencies, or both, have working "Flying Saucers" using this technology? Recent video tapes of a new aircraft based at Groom Dry Lake, Nevada suggests a development that can rise vertically, hover and fly silently with remarkable control, particularly at low altitudes.
It has been called the "BOOMERANG" and will be the subject of a future report. (Tactical High Altitude Penetrator THAP).
THE DINOSAURS
HAD A 64 MILLION YEAR HEAD START
Stenonychosaurus has been credited with being the most intelligent dinosaur. Compared with most others, it had a relatively large brain, although the excess brain volume was probably not concerned with reasoning and other activities that could be called "intelligence."
Stenonychosaurus had large eyes, slender flexible fingers, and a light body. The brain was probably concerned mainly with its highly developed senses, fine control of its limbs, and fast reflexes, which were used in hunting small and elusive prey.
In 1982 Dale Russell and R. S_guin (Ottawa) published an article on Stenonychosaurus. A new partial skeleton had been discovered in 1967 which provided the basis of the first skeletal and flesh restoration of Stenonychosaurus. The detailed work of building the model was illustrated in their paper.
In addition to the restoration, they indulged in an imaginative experiment, posing a question: What might these intelligent dinosaurs have evolved into had they not become extinct near the end of the Cretaceous period about 64 million years ago?
Stenonychosaurus proved to be an interesting choice for the experiment because it was one of the largest-brained and therefore presumably one of the most intelligent of all dinosaurs. The result of the experiment was a creature named "dinosauroid."
One interpretation of the habits of Stenonychosaurus is that they were lightly built active hunters of small prey_perhaps small lizards and mammals. The long grasping hands, and the large eyes which pointed partly forward and therefore gave reasonably stereoscopic vision, may indicate that these were nimble predators which were active at dusk or even at night when many small nocturnal mammals would have been active.
Dinosauroid was constructed by extrapolating from these attributes. It was visualized as a highly intelligent and manipulative dinosaur. What it might have lacked in speed, it would have made up for by its superior intellect. This would have allowed it to avoid potential predators by outwitting them rather than by running away.
As a predator it may have been able to catch prey both by endurance running and perhaps by making simple weapons_ much as primitive homo sapiens would do 64 million years later.
But let's take the evolution of the Saurian a step further. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Stenonychosaurus did not become extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period and actually had a chance to evolve into something close to the Russell-S_guin model.
It is remarkable to note that the Saurian creature bears a striking resemblance to descriptions given by witnesses during a number of UFO encounters! Long, clawlike fingers, large, elongated eyes, reptilian nostrils, three-toed, clawed feet, lizard-like skin, small stature and absence of ears are all features people have reported as belonging to UFO occupants.
Scientists do not know most dinosaurs became extinct; they assume it because few relatives exist today in forms recognizable as dinosaurs.
But what if one or two examples actually survived and managed to evolve into highly intelligent creatures capable of building not only simple weapons, but sophisticated craft to explore the cosmos?
The Sauroids would have a 64 million year head start on homo sapiens. They could have built their empires and space craft and disappeared among the stars millions of years before humans ever evolved to walk upon this planet!
Or if the Saurians are not from planet Earth, why not from another where evolution might have followed a similar pattern with similar, if not identical, creatures, including dinosaurs, at about the same cosmic time_50 to 70 million years ago?
While it is fairly certain life does not exist on any other planet of our solar system, we cannot rule out the existence of life on any of the billions of other planets that have revolved about billions of other suns in billions of other universes for billions of years before humankind ever existed.
Let's face it: When we finally arrive on some distant planet inhabited by sentient beings, whether more or less intelligent than ourselves, scientists and intelligence agencies are going to insist that specimens be returned to Earth, dead or alive, for study. Knowing this, should we be surprised or outraged if creatures from other worlds arrive here and begin taking specimens of earthlings for their own scientific studies?
The requirement for the complete and successful examination of any living organism is to reduce it to its smallest parts and look at each cell or atom under a powerful electron microscope or vaporize small samples in a spectrometer to determine the elements of which the creature was comprised when it was alive. Sample parts might suffice for some studies but whole creatures, alive and dead, will be required for others.
These sample creatures will be acquired for study by abduction and murder. Period. Those in government agencies whose business it is to plan and coordinate these missions have known it all along. It is possible that they are practicing and honing their skills by abducting and dissecting their fellow humans from time to time. At the same time, they may be building their own secret parts bank for the generations of space travelers who will need spare kidneys, livers, eyes, hearts and lungs on Mars about three decades hence.
It's a thought, isn't it?
Another thought is that the creatures who crew UFOs might not be from another planet, but might have been genetically built and incubated right here on earth in one of those secret underground laboratories, and not by aliens, but by human tinkerers. Suppose the future astronaut is not a warm-blooded mammal (human), but a cold-blooded intelligent reptile (saurian) who can tolerate cosmic radiation better than humans and who have shown to be able to survive mass extinctions with little change or effect in their subsequent behavior and evolution.
Suppose the saurian is not a creature who lived before us, but is the creature, by genetic manipulation, some of us are soon to become.
Some reptiles, remember, have an uncanny ability to regenerate lost parts, often two or three parts. This would prove a real benefit for explorers on a planet several million miles from home base where spare arms and legs are not readily available.
Some reptiles can survive days or even weeks between meals while warm-blooded mammals can hardly exist more than a few hours!
Some reptiles appear to be unaffected by cosmic radiation that is killing human beings by the thousands. Some reptiles can hibernate for months and years at a time without suffering adverse effects.
Cruel experiments on humans in Germany during the second war helped put American and Russian Cosmonauts into space only two decades later. Those experiments haven't stopped simply because we have no announced plans to return to the lunar surface soon.
This country is planning a journey to colonize Mars in less than 30 years! Imagine what it will take to get us there and keep us there!
Dinosauroid. Have witnesses seen this creature in one of its evolved forms? Is this what contemporary Stenonychosaurus might have looked like had it continued to evolve to the present day? Russell and S_guin assumed for it a large brain, and the short neck and upright posture were arrived at as a way of balancing the head more efficiently. In turn, the vertical posture removed the need for a tail. The legs were modified by lowering the ankle to the ground and the foot was lengthened. It would have stood upright at about five feet tall. Given the proper conditions and time, this evolution would be quite possible.

HOW CAN WE FIND OUT WHAT'S ON THOSE SECRET BASES?
UFO's and America's new aircraft technology are the most closely guarded government and military secrets in history. The X-30 (Aurora) project has as its goal an aircraft that can take off from the ground, fly to the upper atmosphere, enter the edge of space and accelerate to 17,500 miles per hour as it begins an intercontinental flight lasting only a few minutes.
The X-30 is a noisy, highly visible aircraft until it reaches the upper limits of its flight, or until it turns on its ECM gear. One of its present missions is to divert attention away from more spectacular aircraft development, particularly that which is being conducted at Groom Dry Lake in Nevada.
Government officials and intelligence agencies claim there is nothing at Groom Lake, that it doesn't exist. At the same time, gun-toting security guards protecting a runway almost seven miles long will threaten you with charges of espionage if you get too close to their facility.
Actually, I don't think they would charge you with espionage. Consider for a minute: How could anyone be charged with spying on a facility that officially doesn't exist? Believe me, trying to prove you were spying at Groom Lake would be more difficult and more embarrassing than denying the government is hiding UFO's in the first place.
It would be a lot easier for them to simply kill you and bury you in the desert because they wouldn't be required to open their non-existent base to public prying during the subsequent investigation.
Let's play a mind game. It's called "King of The Hill," or "Blue Flag, Red Flag." You have a secret base sequestered in the high desert just north of Las Vegas and you're doing things up there that have piqued my interest. I'm determined to have a look at your facility. How do I go about it?
What I would not do is organize a caravan of a dozen or more people to go parading into town to announce our intentions. I would go alone or with one or two other people. I would not tell anyone I was leaving and I would not stop anywhere near the base to herald my arrival. I would stay out of town and particularly would I stay out of the local gathering place.
If no one knows you arrived, no one can call the secret phone number to let the spooks know they should keep their plane on the ground, see?
Officially, two billion dollars were allotted to the X-30 Project and if you don't believe some of that money was set aside to pay informants in the villages surrounding Groom Lake, you're not seeing the big picture.
While planning your clandestine mission, bear in mind that the only person you can really trust is you.
But this is only half the strategy. The desert around that base is littered with the same kind of motion sensors we used in Vietnam to detect enemy troop movements. Walk through the desert, day or night, and a panel on the base lights up like a Christmas tree. Pretty soon, here come the security police a hundred miles an hour to threaten you with extinction.
These motion sensors are only the most immediate indication that you are treading on forbidden ground. Every few hours of every day satellites pass over the base taking pictures that can reveal items as small as this 8x11" sheet of paper with astonishing clarity. Sensors can see right through your tent or automobile or motorhome. The people to whom these images are presented can tell the year and model of your vehicle, can tell if a person is male or female, adult or child, and what they are carrying in their hands at any given moment. They know when you go pottie and where.
How do you get around this problem? Here are some suggestions:
First let's outline the mission. We don't want to set fires or blow up airplanes. We're not saboteurs, merely overly curious taxpayers. We don't really want to go on the base. We don't have to; we can find out everything we need to know from about 30 miles away on civilian territory.
The mission here, if it really makes any difference, is to find out what kind of aircraft are being tested at Groom Dry Lake and what other odd goings-on are occurring there. We must remember that we are going to penetrate a secret facility and discover information not intended for our eyes. With a little questioning, you can discover the schedule of most of the satellite fly-overs and plan your activities when they are over the horizon.
What will we do with the information once we have it? (because we are going to get it if we plan our mission as semi-professional spies and not as a roving band of zealots who have great purpose without great plan).
All we need are pictures. Still pictures, motion pictures, video pictures. One or all. Since the base is fairly well hidden on a dry lake surrounded by formidable mountains, we must find a way, short of walking, to get above the mountains in any direction from the base.
Idea #1). A radio controlled model airplane designed specifically to house a camera that can take still or motion pictures of the desired area. Our own little U2, so to speak. Engines can be muffled to be nearly silent. The wood and plastic model will not return a radar profile so it could, if required, fly right over the base without being detected.
The camera should be mounted vertically, be of suitable format (70 mm or larger) and be capable of being programmed to fire at predetermined intervals after the plane reaches altitude and desired heading.
The radio signals should be capable of reaching the plane over a fairly long distance, probably farther than a normal RC transmitter. If the lens on the camera is of sufficient focal length, we can stand off a safe distance and still get our pictures.
The camera and plane must be recoverable after the sortie is completed. Infra red film should be loaded for night flights, black and white Shellburst for day flights. A navigation light should be affixed to the plane and be visible for a mile or more so we can keep track of it.
Idea #2). An unmanned tethered balloon rigged with a suspended platform capable of holding a still or video camera. The platform should be constructed to rotate similar to a television antenna. The balloon should be tethered at four points to minimize pitching and yawing. The control cables should run from the platform or basket to the ground where batteries and monitors are located, perhaps in a van or motorhome.
The tethers should be of sufficient length to allow the balloon to ascend to 3000 to 5000 feet (you'll be violating sacrosanct airspace, so be prepared to haul it in or cut it loose). To reduce weight, tethers might be of mylar monofilament. The balloon will have to be of a size sufficient to lift the weight of the platform, the camera, the motor and rotating assembly and the tethers and control cables.
The camera must carry a lens capable of recording clear, sharp large scale images over a distance of 25 to 30 miles. Any photo supply house will sell or lease the proper gear and film to you for the right price.
Idea #3). This would be my choice. An ultra light aircraft. No license required. Can be trailered and assembled in minutes by anyone with a screwdriver and a couple of wrenches. Carries one or two fully grown adults. One qualified pilot and one cameraperson. Plenty of fuel. No problems with directional control of the vehicle. Shoot what you see, change lenses, change film, stay as long as required and land. Again, the camera should be fitted with a telephoto lens similar to a Questar. Try to get something with an effective focal length of 250 to 500 inches.
The disadvantage to the ultra light is that it is large, noisy and highly visible, increasing the chance someone will drive over to see what the heck you're up to before you complete the mission.
A rifleman on the ground could easily shoot you down if he wanted to and that will definitely ruin your plane, to say nothing of what it will do to you.
With some rigorous practice assembling and launching before you go to the desert, you should be able to get your mission off the ground in about 30 minutes after you park the truck.
What we are going to do to obtain our intelligence data is to use the same tricks they use to gather their intelligence information_day and night aerial photography. We are going to take aerial photos early in the morning, around noon, and just before sunset. We need the early morning and evening shots to establish the length of shadows. This, coupled with our altitude, focal length of the lens and sun angle, will tell us how tall structures are. The shadows lend a third dimension to the images on the film. If we calculate the height of the average man as six feet, we can use those shadows to determine about how tall other nearby objects are.
We need the noon shots to eliminate shadows so we can put each object in relation to all others and determine the sizes and placement of the objects we see on the film. Ideally, we need some vertical shots with approximately 60% overlap so we can construct stereoscopic models.
We also need some horizontals (obliques) so we can see into hangar bays and between buildings during morning and afternoon shots when the sun will project light where we need it.
It is possible we might use all three aerial recon methods to obtain our data. The RC model plane can get our verticals, particularly during the day so we can establish the locations of buildings, aircraft, revetments, etc., and we can plan our night missions more effectively. We'll know where to look for likely activity.
The balloon can be used to take the Infra Red night shots. Ideally, the camera would be fitted with a night scope so we can really see what's going on and rotate the camera more precisely. We might want two cameras; a video camera with a nightscope to use as a viewfinder/rangefinder boresighted to a 16mm cine camera like a Milliken, loaded with IR film and capable of shooting at 1000 to 5000 frames per second. You would be surprised what you can see on IR film! The heat of the vehicle and crew, for one thing. Lights and exhaust for another. Sensors, too.
The ultra light aircraft can be used to recon the area and look for security vehicles when not being used to take telephoto shots of the base during the day. Air observers and ground personnel must have short range FM radios.
Now, you're saying all this seems like a lot of trouble just to get some pictures of the most secret aircraft in the world. But you're going after pictures of the most secret aircraft in the world and if you really, really want to find out what's down there, plan on spending some time and money on the project. We didn't find out Russian missiles were in Cuba by asking the Cubans to release information; we sent some U2s and RF-101 Voodoos over to take pictures and we knew it for a lead pipe fact.
The point is: If we want to get the information we feel we must have, we can no longer treat this as a weekend holiday to the Alien Inn. We must sit down and plan an incursion into very unfriendly territory, which incursion might get someone killed. Period.
Those who decide to contribute funds for the equipment and materials should make their presence known in some manner. Those who take it upon themselves to plan and execute the mission must understand that they cannot expect to go for a weekend trip, but must be prepared to camp out in the desert for a week or more. That means most of the food, water and sanitary supplies must go right along with the balloons, helium, cameras, film and aircraft.
That means radio silence. That means completely avoiding other people for however long it takes to get results.
And don't forget to take a semi-automatic weapon and at least 100 rounds of ammunition per person. Just in case.
Espionage (for that is what it is) is serious business, folks. You aren't going to discover what's on the other side of the mountain by sitting around at the restaurant in groups of two dozen or more and expect CIA to launch a UFO on cue when you go roaring up to the viewpoint.
You toss your bottle of Canadian blend into the trash, kiss your wife goodbye, sneak in, tell no one you are there, unload all your gear, send your driver on his way, set up housekeeping, and stay as long as necessary or until the big bad wolf arrives to run you off. That's the only way we're going to get usable pictures of the top secret aircraft flying out of and into Groom Dry Lake.
Where would I set all this up if I were seriously entertaining the idea to execute the mission? Well, certainly not at the best-known and most convenient mountain in the area. The one mountain left from which people can see the base is only one facet of what the intelligence community calls "crowd control." As long as you know you can see the base from that mountain without being unreasonably harassed, that's where you will go, right?
And, of course, that's where they want you to go so they don't have to spread their security forces too thin to cover the several hundred thousand square miles of Groom Dry Lake looking for interlopers.
The idea, then, to beat them at their own game, would be to go to the least accessible and least likely area to begin your recon of the base. Most of the motion sensors are over on the easy side. Most of the PIs will be looking for activity over there. Begin somewhere else.
Of course, this will require a pre-assault expedition to locate the best area to set up your base camp away from the civilized villages that were established to attract you like moths to a flame so base intelligence personnel can keep track of your caravans.
As a diversion, you might schedule a weekend symposium at or near the Alien Inn to keep the PIs occupied while two or three courageous souls venture over to the other side of the base to launch their balloon and RC U2 recon plane.
If intelligence personnel locate your base camp, they will descend upon you like the wrath of God, shouting and shooting.
Expect, at best, to lose your equipment if you get caught. Expect to be detained indefinitely while someone reams you a new fanny and determines what will become of you. If you are apprehended, control of your destiny will be in the hands of people who really don't care too much about your health and welfare.
Expect, at worst, to become a statistic, a MIA. For this reason, you should complete a will and let friends know they should contact your relatives should you not return by a certain date. Don't tell them where you are going or they may become statistics, too.
On the other hand, as I have stated before, some things are better left alone. Secret weapons are secret because the average American and the rest of the world has no need to know what is parked behind those revetments or stored in underground caverns.
I have seen nothing concrete to convince me that the aircraft at Groom Lake (or anywhere else for that matter) are anything more than progressive developments of technology begun in Germany, England and America prior to and during the Second World War.
If a Spanloader (Flying Wing) exists that can rise vertically, hover and sail silently away, and if you think that is remarkable, remember that the prototypes of vertical lift aircraft were being developed before the Second World War, sixty years ago. Remember that VTOL and STOL aircraft have been constantly developed and vigorously refined since the end of the war. Remember that computers can produce counter-frequencies to mask any sound and produce complete silence, even to the loudest aircraft around, the AV8 Harrier, a V/STOL tactical ground support fighter that literally causes the earth to tremble when it lifts off vertically.
Be aware that if a computer can produce counter-frequencies to mask sound, cloaking devices-computers to mask images (make things invisible) may also be utilized on the next generation of military aircraft.
And remember, too, the VCASS helmet being developed at Wright Pat. The same idea (Virtual Reality) is so common on the commercial market that, for twenty dollars, you can go to an Arcade, strap on a helmet and play VR games for half an hour in three sensations: sight (color), sound (stereo) and touch.
What many people perceive as "new" technology is merely old technology and ideas refined and removed from the test bench to become usable hardware.
If you were astounded by laser and wire and TV guided bombs during the Gulf War, please remember that Germany had developed and was using those weapons on a regular basis by 1944. They had wire guided air to air, air to ground and ground to ground missiles. They had air to ground TV guided bombs. They had air to ground and ground to air radio guided missiles and bombs. They had remotely fired rockets. They had jet and rocket airplanes. They had solid and liquid fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles. They had developed and flown an advanced jet-powered saucer-shaped aircraft (which may or may not have been captured and refined by western powers after the war). Eugene Sanger had proposed and presented the "Suborbital Skip Bomber" that would have carried nuclear warheads from Germany to the North American continent and against which no deterrent had even been conceived!
This was fifty years ago when many aircraft were still being made of wood and covered with fabric in most of the rest of the world!
So remarkable were the inventions of German scientists that the victorious nations kidnapped the scientists and confiscated the weapons by the shiploads before the war was even over. Many of the German scientists smuggled to America were put to work on our space program. Their most notable achievement was getting American astronauts to the moon and back within a brief 20 years.
The most beneficial results as far as the rest of us are concerned were advances in cosmetics, synthetic fabrics and fuels and automobile products, and intercontinental air travel in planes with jet engines and swept-back wings and flying tails.
But behind all the glamor and clamor of the headline news, don't you imagine other people were quietly at work developing secret weapons and secret aircraft and secret computers to get us, not to the moon and Mars, but to the edges of the known universe? That was, after all, the real dream of the German scientists.
Don't you imagine someone somewhere has been working on the design of the starship with all its intricate and manifold parts that will carry the human seed to other worlds? Don't you imagine that hundreds of people have struggled for decades to create the perfect power source, some sort of Cascade Generator that would render a craft massless and drive it at light speed_if for no other reason than to sever our dependency on foreign oil?
Don't you imagine that we see a trickle-down benefit of such research on the commercial market in the form of automobile computers, aircraft designs, even children's toys (designed to give today's kids a hands-on feel of tomorrow's heads-up display in their starfighter).
And don't you imagine that most of this RDT&E must remain secret or top secret if we are to maintain superiority in the field?
Recently launched satellites can track the migratory habits of creatures as small as sea turtles in the Atlantic Ocean or pinpoint fires burning out of control in the rain forests. They could also keep track of humans implanted with small transmitters or creatures alien to our planet, or space craft, space debris and small planetoids approaching and entering Earth's atmosphere some not-so-future day.
Being an author, I'm as curious as the next person about the inventions and new developments that will carry us into the 21st Century and beyond, however, conspiracy or no conspiracy, I really believe we ought not go scrubbing about on secret RDT&E bases lest we find and expose exactly what we are looking for.
WE WANT YOUR IDEAS!
Bearing in mind that concerned intelligence agencies may be reading this material on a fairly regular basis, if you have ideas, comments or suggestions of a constructive nature, we invite you to submit them for publication.

WE WATCH THEM; THEY WATCH US: Why you can't get close to a secret airbase anymore.
One reason it is so difficult to get close to a National Test Range like Tonopah, China Lake, Groom Lake or White Sands is because there are large bore cameras planted all over the mountains to keep an eye on the ground when they are not pointed skyward.
A typical set-up at a Test Range would include a ring of Cinetheodolites, Cinesextants and video cameras around the perimeter of the area where aircraft are flown or packages are dropped from aircraft to impact on the range.
A Cinetheodolite is generally a 70mm sequential camera that records events in real time while displaying dates, times, speed, altitude, etc. on the film. They are usually pedestal mounted 24 inch or 36 inch focal length cameras with a single operator sighting through a reflecting telescope boresighted to the lens.
A Cinesextant is a mobile or stationary mount bearing two, four or six long focal length surveillance cameras. The mount is electrically and hydraulically driven by servos actuated by an operator who sits in a seat between the lens barrels.
A "joystick", much like the control stick of an airplane is between the operator's legs. Two switches may be found near the control. One switch arms the cameras; the second switch alerts the mission controller that the operator has acquired the target and is tracking.
A trigger on the control stick will fire all the cameras that have been selected by the mount operator. These cameras may include 16mm and 35 mm cine cameras and video cameras fitted to extreme focal length lenses by C-ring adapters. Focal lengths of the lenses may vary from 12 or 24 inches to 250 inches or greater.
The lenses are basically large refracting terrestrial telescopes fitted to various cameras. All the lenses are boresighted to a spotting scope in the center of the mount and eye level with the seated operator. Boresighting is accomplished by pointing the spotting scope at a large black and white checkerboard target several miles away, locking the mount, and adjusting all the cameras and lenses so they point at exactly the same line or patch on the distant target.
These cameras and lenses are so precise that the mount operator may see and transmit images of objects as small as human faces at a distance of 40 to 50 miles away!
Transmission of images is accomplished by one of two methods simultaneously: Cine film which is taken to the base photo lab for processing, and video pictures in real time transmitted via microwave dish to a control center where it is both recorded and further transmitted to other distant stations.
If you see a camera station on a mountain and you want to know if they are using real time video, look for a microwave dish. If you want to know where the control building is, just note which way the dish is pointing. Microwave is line-of-sight. All the dishes will point toward the control building or another microwave tower. Eventually you can narrow it down to the last point of reception, whether it is on the base or at a control building located on the Test Range.
Inside this building will be a number of technicians who are gathering information on the test vehicle by various means. Some information is via the video pictures; other information is from telemetry packages aboard the vehicle being observed.
Radar operators will be present. Video technicians will be there, too. Photographers will be manning pedestal mounts on the roof of the building or at concrete platforms nearby. A helicopter pad will be present. The mission controller (the guy who counts 'em down) and the Range Boss reside there during days when operations are being conducted. Normally, like most other government facilities, operations are not conducted during the weekends (but not always).
You can spot the camera stations on these secret bases by looking for a white dome shaped like a small observatory. They work exactly the same way. Doors crank open electrically and the dome turns 360 degrees.
Cinetheodolites are generally found atop concrete buildings surrounded by high, barbed-wire fences.
The Cinesextants may be mounted "free-standing" inside a dome atop a tower 60 to 80 feet tall. They may also be found as mobile mounts on four-wheeled trailers and covered with heavy plastic shrouds to protect the lenses and cameras from the heat and weather. All are kept inside the fence behind locked gates.
The mount can be manipulated to depress below 0§, or below the horizon, and can be elevated to the zenith or 90§. It can also be rotated through 360§ azimuth, all quite rapidly, to track supersonic aircraft, missiles, bombs and other weapons.
Generally speaking, an aircraft flying at 30,000 to 40,000 feet (7 miles) can easily be acquired and tracked from as far away as 50 to 60 miles slant range. If the aircraft is as large as a C-130, the field of view with the largest lens might only cover the loading ramp!
Some years ago Operations Department at El Centro, California, winter home of the Blue Angels, witnessed the real-time live crash of one of the aircraft because one of our Cinesextant operators was tracking them on an adjacent range, about 25 miles away, during a lull in our drops.
Other cameras you are likely to find on these secret bases are shorter focal length types mounted in 6x6 trucks or other vehicles capable of maneuvering in desert areas. The pedestals remain in the truck but the cameras are removed when not in use.
A variety of hand-held still and motion picture and video cameras are also used around these test sites. Focal lengths will vary from 35mm to 50mm on still cameras to 250 inches and up on the Cinesextants. Some of the lens barrels are 10 to 15 feet in length and 12 to 16 inches in diameter.
The cine cameras are capable of recording events from about 6 frames per second to thousands of frames per second (extreme slow motion) for precise analysis of the object being tested. Shutters may be standard "butterfly" types as found on most older cine cameras (Mitchell, Milliken and Arriflex) to rotating prisms and mirrors on more sophisticated types operating at extreme high speeds.
Film sizes may be 16mm, 35mm and 70mm, and all sizes and camera types may be included on any single Cinesextant mount which could bear and fire as many as six cine and video cameras at one time.
Film types used would include color film with speeds of ASA 500 or even greater, usually pushed to ASA 1000 or greater for processing, and black and white Shellburst, a minus blue data recording film originally designed to accurately record ordnance explosions. Shellburst has haze filters built in so aircraft really stand out when flying at high altitudes! (Are you paying attention?)
Shellburst is available in 35mm and 70mm format at most large camera/film stores by special order.
Other film used at some bases is Infrared for night sorties to record exhausts, surface heat, crew heat, flight track, shell fragments, trajectories, in SLIR/FLIR devices*, etc. Infrared is also available from large suppliers in 35mm and 70mm format.
The whole point of this report is: If you want to record what they record, you must use the same hardware and film they use! If you have enough money and plenty of time, you could even lease a Cinesextant all set up and ready to haul to the high desert. If you know someone who works for a company like COHU, you might even beg a video camera and nightscope with a monster lens to take a few shots. If you know someone who works for a motion picture company, you might talk them into pointing their camera starward some desert night to see what they can see.
Rising lights are not enough to create profiles of UFOs. Several aircraft can rise vertically, hover and fly off in horizontal flight, although I know of none that do so silently.
We need SHAPES! If I see a Spanloader or "Boomerang" rise vertically, hover and fly away, I won't be unduly impressed. If, however, I see an ovate ellipsoid or a skirted sphere doing the same thing, I can conclude that I have seen that which we commonly call a "Flying Saucer" or UFO.
It is important to understand that an aircraft based on a standard wing design must rely on aerodynamic lift to keep it airborne after it changes to horizontal flight. That makes it an airplane, not a flying saucer.
But a sphere or ellipsoid would remain airborne by virtue of some energy other than the shape of the wing or hull. It must be rendered massless or weightless by an anti mass field and be propelled by some electrodynamic engine unlike any we now know. That may be classified as a UFO or Flying Saucer.
An ellipsoid or sphere without its surrounding field would have the glide coefficient of a Grand piano! An aircraft built upon an aerodynamic wing can glide, however slightly these days, by virtue of the air passing around the shape. Craft designed to swim the oceans of space do not require aerodynamic shape; they could be perfect cubes or polygons and not be affected by the void.
But if you see a craft with a "wing", you can bet your last dollar it was built on Earth by Earthlings for use in Earth's atmosphere (at least part of the time) or it wouldn't be a wing in the first place.
If you can get pictures of these aircraft without violating any laws, do it, so we can eliminate them from our list of things that go bump in the night.
But remember: The camera operators, who can spot and track you from their mountain perches for 50 miles are connected directly to the control building and every other camera operator, as well as to the base and the Security Forces via FM radio and via the real time live video transmissions by microwave.
Additionally, because a rather imposing satellite array is stationed at Groom Lake, we should assume the pictures are also capable of being transmitted directly to CIA or NPIC, or both, in Washington, D.C. by way of their COMINTELSAT as the events occur.
That means if you step behind a bush to pee, several hundred people will be watching. I know because we used to see people doing it in the desert adjacent to our range. The pictures went live to NAS Operations.
When I tell you they know when you go pottie and where, I am as serious as a heart attack.
If you get into their territory and one person sees you, he will inform every other mount operator and Control, who will inform Security, who will buzz out to see if they can add you to the endangered species list.
Security personnel at secret bases like Groom Lake may be civilian contractors, they may be Air Force personnel, or they may be CIA people.
But if I had to hire some mean, reliable guys to keep my secret base secure, I would round up some of those former members of the CIA Shadow Companies (SOG) who were classified as MIA or KHA in Vietnam so they could operate in the provinces around the Plain of Jars in Cambodia with complete impunity.
These guys are already dead, so who would be looking for them if someone finds you've gone missing? They could fairly well do what they wanted, and they are the people I would hire to protect my secret base.
Chances are, if I've thought of that, so have a lot of other people who spend most of their time thinking about just those kinds of things. For these reasons, it would be prudent to consult reliable charts before you go traipsing off to take pictures around Groom Dry Lake, Nevada (or anywhere else for that matter).
* SLIR/FLIR: Side-Looking Infrared and Forward-Looking Infrared cameras are generally mounted in all aerial recon aircraft and in a number of attack and ground support aircraft. Coupled with radar systems, these cameras are capable of "seeing" hundreds of miles inside enemy territory.