Figured I'd share the story here and see if anyone had any ideas on what I was seeing...
A couple of nights ago at work, I was heading north back to our base on goggles. I started to notice there were several lights moving in what looked to be some sort of orbit pattern "some distance" in front of me. On clear(er) nights, I've watched A-10s run attack patterns up in the Moody MOAs while aided, and since this was a weeknight, I thought maybe that's what I was seeing, although the lights had too much relative motion for an A-10 at the distance that it would have been. The lights weren't in any other MOA.
As we plodded along, I ended up counting at least 9 separate lights, and the pattern they were flying wasn't so much an orbit or wagon-wheel, but more of a swarm (from my perspective, anyway), so it wasn't a conventional racetrack attack pattern or a tanker track. The lights would be bright when heading towards me and then dim when they'd turn abeam or head away, but no smacks on any of them. I then realized that when they were headed towards me, I could see them unaided, so they were significantly closer than I thought and at about 4K-5K'.
Two other odd things I saw on that flight... One of the lights "shot out" another dimmer light that moved quicker than the others and then disappeared. Before I realized how close they were, I thought maybe it was a flare, but then realized the distance it covered didn't make that work. Maybe it was a laser pointer bouncing off atmospherics, but even that's a stretch. I didn't see that happen again. The other thing I saw was there was a slow moving aircraft to the east of the "swarm" with smacks on that didn't look like normal 121 or 135 traffic for that time at night and lingered in that area appearing to slowly orbit. That made me think perhaps it was LE. Maybe it was LE and not even related to the other lights.
I got another flight right after the first and after dropping the patient off, we were headed back north for home. The lights were still there, but had "drifted" east about 15 miles. There was still that other traffic east of the "swarm" that slowly moved north of them. Given how well I could see the individual lights unaided, it seemed like it was something fairly large, although I couldn't tell color of the lights (red vs green) with all of the reflection on my windscreen and distance.
So...any thoughts? I think the carrier left a couple of weeks ago. This was essentially over V198-ish, maybe slightly south, but west of Jax.
I can't figure out if FlightAware let's me see historical data of an area, so no luck looking there, but if someone knows how, it would be interesting to look at it.
A couple of nights ago at work, I was heading north back to our base on goggles. I started to notice there were several lights moving in what looked to be some sort of orbit pattern "some distance" in front of me. On clear(er) nights, I've watched A-10s run attack patterns up in the Moody MOAs while aided, and since this was a weeknight, I thought maybe that's what I was seeing, although the lights had too much relative motion for an A-10 at the distance that it would have been. The lights weren't in any other MOA.
As we plodded along, I ended up counting at least 9 separate lights, and the pattern they were flying wasn't so much an orbit or wagon-wheel, but more of a swarm (from my perspective, anyway), so it wasn't a conventional racetrack attack pattern or a tanker track. The lights would be bright when heading towards me and then dim when they'd turn abeam or head away, but no smacks on any of them. I then realized that when they were headed towards me, I could see them unaided, so they were significantly closer than I thought and at about 4K-5K'.
Two other odd things I saw on that flight... One of the lights "shot out" another dimmer light that moved quicker than the others and then disappeared. Before I realized how close they were, I thought maybe it was a flare, but then realized the distance it covered didn't make that work. Maybe it was a laser pointer bouncing off atmospherics, but even that's a stretch. I didn't see that happen again. The other thing I saw was there was a slow moving aircraft to the east of the "swarm" with smacks on that didn't look like normal 121 or 135 traffic for that time at night and lingered in that area appearing to slowly orbit. That made me think perhaps it was LE. Maybe it was LE and not even related to the other lights.
I got another flight right after the first and after dropping the patient off, we were headed back north for home. The lights were still there, but had "drifted" east about 15 miles. There was still that other traffic east of the "swarm" that slowly moved north of them. Given how well I could see the individual lights unaided, it seemed like it was something fairly large, although I couldn't tell color of the lights (red vs green) with all of the reflection on my windscreen and distance.
So...any thoughts? I think the carrier left a couple of weeks ago. This was essentially over V198-ish, maybe slightly south, but west of Jax.
I can't figure out if FlightAware let's me see historical data of an area, so no luck looking there, but if someone knows how, it would be interesting to look at it.
