A few days ago I posted a video of a pair of F-117s flying out of Tonopah on Oct 10, 2023(Tuesday). For those who haven't seen it yet, here is a link: https://youtu.be/RUTpZSI9tQw?si=VOdAF7nV_Ly46tf-
You are welcome to comment and share of course! There were several questions as to what gear I did use. All photos and videos were indeed taken by a digital camera - Nikon P1000 with a tripod. Well, that's for the Tuesday though.. the following days ruled out to be no less exciting and this is what I will continue to talk about in this post.
Now, the following days I spent on Tikaboo Peak observing Groom. I will just say straight to point - I managed to photograph a pair of landing aircraft of some kind that seemed purely fighter-sized manned planes. I say manned because I could hear and record comms.
Long story short, just after a sunset(more or less from memory - 6:50PM on Oct 11, 2023) I heard an interesting communication between one of the Janet 737, two fastmovers(I know, it's generic term so not saying it was neither program name nor callsign!) of some kind and Groom's tower. Janet was getting close to the base when I heard a pilot saying ".... and we are aware of two fastmovers on a pattern". It immediately raised my interest and I quickly took my camera mounted on a tripod and pointed it towards the base. There was no movements on the ground so I decided to look around through my 3000mm lense. Next several minutes were anything but pure waiting. I wanted to catch something pure military on the ground at Groom as I knew there is no single video or photo of one taken in the last several years, at least. While looking to the left from the base I noticed a very bright and "large" spot of light that was rapidly coming to Groom. It was faster than anything else I saw coming to Groom but at the time it was still a several miles from the Groom's runway. I observed the "light"(don't like to name things that way and just to be straight I'm not UFO guy, but at this point I could only describe it as this) flying on a straight path to the runway and when it was already in the base vicinty, the aircraft rapidly 'hit the brakes' and landed on Runway 32. I recorded the thing on a video but in the dark i could only see some anti-collision lights on it's wingtips. I knew it was probably one of the Groom's F-16D but hey, there was a pair of them! so where is the second one? Well, I grably took my camera to the left to approach line and saw another 'fastmover' coming to the base. The video I took of the first one proved that I could see barely nothing on a screen so maybe a photo with longer time-exposure may be worth to try. When the second jet was coming through the Groom's runway I zoomed my lense towards places where there is more light(like building lights etc.) to 'help' my camera on finding sharpest point. The aircraft appeared on my screen and just when it left the intersection in the center of the field I took the photo. Well, on a small camera screen I could see that I indeed photographed it but tried to snoop around to see where the supposed craft went to on a base. It didn't enter hangars to the South for sure. Due to poor light conditions I couldn't track the aircraft as it probably turned it's lights off when it was already on the ground or maybe I just lost it because of terrain.
Photography has it that it's difficult to always set the correct seetings(and I'm far from being professional)
and that's why we are not satisfied with our work each time. I was real lucky and set right values that even from ~42km away made me possible to somewhat clearly take a shot of some kind of aircraft on the runway.
Below is the photo I labled as "original photo", that is the one I directly copied from the camera to my hard drive and under it there is an enchanced image after Photoshop deinterlace work of mine.
[img]https://i.ibb.co/SVmgPkg/original-vs-deinterlaced-mystery-aircraft.jpg[/img]
[url=https://ibb.co/c2891W9][img]https://i.ibb.co/SVmgPkg/original-vs-deinterlaced-mystery-aircraft.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://ibb.co/c2891W9][img]https://i.ibb.co/5sj36Q3/original-vs-deinterlaced-mystery-aircraft.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://ibb.co/c2891W9][img]https://i.ibb.co/c2891W9/original-vs-deinterlaced-mystery-aircraft.jpg[/img][/url]
I leave it here as it is. The image was not modified in a sense of making it looks better or to prove anything extraordinary. Just used my Photoshop skills to enchance the original version by reducing interlace. As said I'm leaving it here for an interpretation of our readers and some more knowledgeable people.
My bet is that I MIGHT took a photograph of something that is not in any book yet, but I'm far away from being certain or sure and even farer away from claiming I indeed took a photograph of anything black.
Generally it is mystery aircraft to me as I was able to distinguish some features that are different than any other publicly known aircraft type. Things like fuselage layout, configuration, length from the front(nose) to the end of a tail etc. The place it supposedly went after the landing(the North of the base as it didn't enter any of the hangars to the South) may be another clue as it being some sort of foreign or SAP.
Below is the photo of the F-16 that was the first fastmover I took a picture of. This is really bad quality image but you can distinguish a canopy characteristic particularly with an F-16. I took the picture while the aircraft was skidding through the apron after it left intersection and runway itself.
[img]https://i.ibb.co/nmGknHp/mystery1.jpg[/img]
[url=https://ibb.co/7CfyRwh][img]https://i.ibb.co/nmGknHp/mystery1.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://ibb.co/7CfyRwh][img]https://i.ibb.co/tKGCx7R/mystery1.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://ibb.co/7CfyRwh][img]https://i.ibb.co/7CfyRwh/mystery1.jpg[/img][/url]
I'm looking forward to your ideas, guesses and discussion.
Take care,
Michał "n01_b4_flash" Rokita