Simviation Forums

Coming home from Vegas this morning I see a B-52 on final at Nellis just as I am leaving. Last week I see two A-10s following another, hot on the leader's heels as he went slashing through the rock hills just above US95 in the Mercury area. Mercury is where Desert Rock airport is. The jets were only about 300 feet above the ground and were making steep, banking turns to follow the road and avoid the rocks. Impressive, to me. Today I see the sky full of jetliners many miles away and many thousands of feet above the ground. I see a big one heading west and a smaller one heading at right angles. The contrails cross at what looks like from my vantage point to be a very close separation in time. I know that there are certain altitudes for certain directions, but this looked very, very close. I wonder what the passengers in the big airliner were thinking as the smaller one came streaking toward it, looking for all the world like a collision was imminent...

Speaking of contrails-- yesterday, as I was heading out to pick up my milk, I look to the east to where  Fallon Naval Air Station would be and see five round contrails in the sky, like a big helix, but just one half of the circle is there. It's like someone cut a giant Slinky in half and hung it up there. I know Art Bell used to talk about contrails and people getting sick after being in their vicinity, but I feel OK. For now...

Very nice spotting... I tend to walk around looking up, too... and I love to look for stories like this... in the Real Aviation forum.
 

Nice, I love being around Nellis, and since the only times I've been there were during NASCAR races and Red Flag, the pilots like to show-off a bit more than usual.  Makes it extremely entertaining.  Those contrails that you saw, were they horizontal or vertical (like from a spin or a barrel roll)?

I'd love to see things like this... The best I see is the occasional airliner passing waaaaaaaay overhead, The usual GA planes flying over, and I saw a Chinook fly over my house once. When I move out, I'm definitely living near an AFB  ;D

The contrails were horizontal. There were five of them if I recall correctly, but only in one-half of a circle. I have never seen anything like this before. Maybe it was an alien mothership marking a place to land for its invasion fleet...