William One Sac
01-20-2004, 07:00 PM
For those fatigued with fretting over fighters, there was a quiet airshow of sorts over the region Friday and again on Monday night.
"I called my wife, Kathy, and told her we got a show goin' on," said Clarence Everett, who lives near Bath.
Everett was outside about 7 p.m. Friday when he said he looked east and "saw this star blinkin.' It looked different (than a star), and, all of a sudden, it moved. I said, 'That's no star.'"
Everett kept watching, noting the flickering had stopped.
"It was a solid, white light," he explained.
The light began a series of abrupt and erratic motions, said Everett.
What really grabbed his attention, though, was something much lower in the sky.
"Two red balls come above a tree line," said Everett, add-ing they appeared to be much larger than the white lights.
The white lights, he noted, appeared about the size of an average star, but not the red ones, which appeared to him to be "the size of a house."
With a growing light show, Everett knocked on his brother-in-law's door.
"I didn't wanta watch this show by myself," he said.
Everett, who has done a bit of flying and sky-diving, is familiar with things airborne, including the behavior of air currents at different levels in the atmosphere.
By the time his brother-in-law joined him, Everett said, with three white lights in the sky, he saw "another red one come up."
"Only momentarily would they be red, and then they went white," said Everett, who was growing increasingly curious.
By about 9 o'clock, estimates Everett, there were quite a few lights moving around with more red ones joining.
"All of a sudden, right east of us, two red lights come on," he said. "They were right on the ground."
Those, he said, behaved differently, "sparkin' like a fuse. They just come red and went out."
The two men, in an effort to explain away what they were seeing, tried to make a weather balloon fit the mold.
Everett said he abandoned that notion when another red light appeared just above tree level.
"This thing was big as a house," he noted. "Wasn't no party balloon; that's for sure."
By this time, Everett said there were a total of 12 lights contained in four groups of three, creating a triangle.
His wife stayed and watched with him until 12:30 a.m., said Everett. He told her, "'I'm gonna stay and see this show,' and I sat there until 2:30."
The erratic motions diminished, he said, and the triangles, by now about the brightness of a "dim, white star," began to go their separate ways.
That helped confirm that they weren't drifting balloons, said Everett, who knew that such balloons would tend to float in the same direction, discounting drastic wind shifts aloft.
Three of the groups moved slowly away from each other, roughly along compass points that configured a T, said Everett.
The last light of the evening was an "intense white light" that was constant, accompanied by one red and one blue light that turned on and off. "I never did hear any sound; that's what drew my attention to it."
It took a few minutes for it to dawn on the reporter -- who has flown all kinds of aircraft -- that, on Saturday night, he had seen something matching Everett's last description.
A very bright white light, appearing about the altitude of a tall television tower appeared on a drive from Washington to Raleigh on U.S. Highway 264 near Greenville. It, too, appeared to be stationary.
Curiosity finally required a stop on the shoulder at which point the lights were close enough to determine that the object was moving at about the speed of an ultralight aircraft which appears, from a distance, to be stationary.
However, the characteristic whine of an ultralight engine was absent -- and the lights didn't match any configuration that's legal to fly at night. The bright light was at the front, and the much dimmer, blinking red and blue lights were just behind the white light.
A call to Lockwood Aviation in Florida, a supplier of ultralight parts and supplies, confirmed that legal ultralight aircraft lights don't match that pattern.
"A legal ultralight can't fly at night," added Jeff Hudson, a part-owner of the company.
Hudson also instructs in ultralight aircraft and said it was possible that an ultralight could be fitted with lights that match the pattern Everett described. But the craft couldn't be flown legally at night. The absence of engine noise also puzzled Hudson.
His best guess was an aircraft -- an "Aircam" used for aerial photography and equipped with a powerful forward spotlight -- under development in Virginia by a former Navy pilot, conceivably could be quiet enough to remain unheard at a distance. However, that aircraft, he explained, still is required to display the traditional unblinking red light on the left wing and green light on the right wing, as well as a white light on the tail.
Lt. Justin Colvin, a Marine spokesman at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, said the Marines have rescue helicopters equipped with very bright spotlights that would display a bright white light from a distance.
However, those helicopters have twin rotors that can be heard from quite a distance.
He said the Marines also have an unusual aircraft -- an unpiloted small plane designated Unmanned Aerial Vehicle -- capable of relatively low airspeeds, that is used for aerial reconnaissance. The UAV, however, "sounds like a flying lawn mower," said Colvin, adding the drones are not flown as far north as Washington or Greenville.
Colvin had no explanation for what was seen, adding nothing else in the Marines' inventory matches the description.
"We don't test any experimental aircraft at Cherry Point," explained Colvin.
The closest air station that does is in Maryland, said Colvin.
On June 14, another Daily News' reporter saw what he described as two "orangeish white lights on the horizon" on a drive back from Williamston to Washington. The lights, he added, were horizontally aligned, moved slowly and were observed for about eight minutes.
Reached at home Tuesday evening, Kathy Currier, Everett's wife, said she was "skeptical" of such things but still has no explanation for what she saw.
Asked if her husband -- who was not home during the conversation -- is prone to flights of fancy, she said, "No," describing him as "level-headed."
Regarding the phone call summoning her to the show, Currier confirmed her husband's description of the spectacle.
"It was doing what he said it was," she noted.
http://www.wdnweb.com/articles/2004/01/21/news/news03.txt
"I called my wife, Kathy, and told her we got a show goin' on," said Clarence Everett, who lives near Bath.
Everett was outside about 7 p.m. Friday when he said he looked east and "saw this star blinkin.' It looked different (than a star), and, all of a sudden, it moved. I said, 'That's no star.'"
Everett kept watching, noting the flickering had stopped.
"It was a solid, white light," he explained.
The light began a series of abrupt and erratic motions, said Everett.
What really grabbed his attention, though, was something much lower in the sky.
"Two red balls come above a tree line," said Everett, add-ing they appeared to be much larger than the white lights.
The white lights, he noted, appeared about the size of an average star, but not the red ones, which appeared to him to be "the size of a house."
With a growing light show, Everett knocked on his brother-in-law's door.
"I didn't wanta watch this show by myself," he said.
Everett, who has done a bit of flying and sky-diving, is familiar with things airborne, including the behavior of air currents at different levels in the atmosphere.
By the time his brother-in-law joined him, Everett said, with three white lights in the sky, he saw "another red one come up."
"Only momentarily would they be red, and then they went white," said Everett, who was growing increasingly curious.
By about 9 o'clock, estimates Everett, there were quite a few lights moving around with more red ones joining.
"All of a sudden, right east of us, two red lights come on," he said. "They were right on the ground."
Those, he said, behaved differently, "sparkin' like a fuse. They just come red and went out."
The two men, in an effort to explain away what they were seeing, tried to make a weather balloon fit the mold.
Everett said he abandoned that notion when another red light appeared just above tree level.
"This thing was big as a house," he noted. "Wasn't no party balloon; that's for sure."
By this time, Everett said there were a total of 12 lights contained in four groups of three, creating a triangle.
His wife stayed and watched with him until 12:30 a.m., said Everett. He told her, "'I'm gonna stay and see this show,' and I sat there until 2:30."
The erratic motions diminished, he said, and the triangles, by now about the brightness of a "dim, white star," began to go their separate ways.
That helped confirm that they weren't drifting balloons, said Everett, who knew that such balloons would tend to float in the same direction, discounting drastic wind shifts aloft.
Three of the groups moved slowly away from each other, roughly along compass points that configured a T, said Everett.
The last light of the evening was an "intense white light" that was constant, accompanied by one red and one blue light that turned on and off. "I never did hear any sound; that's what drew my attention to it."
It took a few minutes for it to dawn on the reporter -- who has flown all kinds of aircraft -- that, on Saturday night, he had seen something matching Everett's last description.
A very bright white light, appearing about the altitude of a tall television tower appeared on a drive from Washington to Raleigh on U.S. Highway 264 near Greenville. It, too, appeared to be stationary.
Curiosity finally required a stop on the shoulder at which point the lights were close enough to determine that the object was moving at about the speed of an ultralight aircraft which appears, from a distance, to be stationary.
However, the characteristic whine of an ultralight engine was absent -- and the lights didn't match any configuration that's legal to fly at night. The bright light was at the front, and the much dimmer, blinking red and blue lights were just behind the white light.
A call to Lockwood Aviation in Florida, a supplier of ultralight parts and supplies, confirmed that legal ultralight aircraft lights don't match that pattern.
"A legal ultralight can't fly at night," added Jeff Hudson, a part-owner of the company.
Hudson also instructs in ultralight aircraft and said it was possible that an ultralight could be fitted with lights that match the pattern Everett described. But the craft couldn't be flown legally at night. The absence of engine noise also puzzled Hudson.
His best guess was an aircraft -- an "Aircam" used for aerial photography and equipped with a powerful forward spotlight -- under development in Virginia by a former Navy pilot, conceivably could be quiet enough to remain unheard at a distance. However, that aircraft, he explained, still is required to display the traditional unblinking red light on the left wing and green light on the right wing, as well as a white light on the tail.
Lt. Justin Colvin, a Marine spokesman at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, said the Marines have rescue helicopters equipped with very bright spotlights that would display a bright white light from a distance.
However, those helicopters have twin rotors that can be heard from quite a distance.
He said the Marines also have an unusual aircraft -- an unpiloted small plane designated Unmanned Aerial Vehicle -- capable of relatively low airspeeds, that is used for aerial reconnaissance. The UAV, however, "sounds like a flying lawn mower," said Colvin, adding the drones are not flown as far north as Washington or Greenville.
Colvin had no explanation for what was seen, adding nothing else in the Marines' inventory matches the description.
"We don't test any experimental aircraft at Cherry Point," explained Colvin.
The closest air station that does is in Maryland, said Colvin.
On June 14, another Daily News' reporter saw what he described as two "orangeish white lights on the horizon" on a drive back from Williamston to Washington. The lights, he added, were horizontally aligned, moved slowly and were observed for about eight minutes.
Reached at home Tuesday evening, Kathy Currier, Everett's wife, said she was "skeptical" of such things but still has no explanation for what she saw.
Asked if her husband -- who was not home during the conversation -- is prone to flights of fancy, she said, "No," describing him as "level-headed."
Regarding the phone call summoning her to the show, Currier confirmed her husband's description of the spectacle.
"It was doing what he said it was," she noted.
http://www.wdnweb.com/articles/2004/01/21/news/news03.txt