At approximately 6:30 pm in Camarillo CA, my family and I witnessed an unusual contrail being created by an aircraft flying nearby. We were driving out of our neighborhood to go see a local movie, and had just pulled out of our driveway and were driving westward when we saw it. I immediately stopped right in the middle of the residential street to watch. It was flying a northerly track just in front of us (perhaps a few miles to our west just above Ventura or further out), flying from our left to our right. The sun was near setting, so the (single) contrail high above was clearly illuminated in the evening sky. The aircraft was probably at least 20,000 ft. in altitude (I don't know the altitude required for contrail formation on a typical day), and was emitting both constant and discreet periodic pulses of contrail matter (condensation) as it flew. The pulsing period was maybe 2 or 3 seconds but constant, and we witnessed perhaps 5 to 7 of these pulses as it tracked to our right. I immediately recognized the unusualness of the contrail (early 1990’s “Aurora” sightings) and pointed it out to my family as I slowed the vehicle to watch. My wife (front passenger seat) and daughter (middle row seat) could see it, but my son in the 3^rd row seat of the minivan could not. The outline of the aircraft was clear and visible, but my recollection is that it’s geometry was not unusual (I wish now I’d looked closer at that) and it’s speed characteristic for an airliner or business jet in proportion to it’s apparent size, so I focused my attention instead on the contrail formation. The diameter of the pulse “bubbles” was perhaps 4 times the size of the constant portion of the contrail.

Flash animation depicting what we saw [click on the pic below]   (courtesy of MyCranium.com)

flight path of aircraft

I had no camera, and was running late for the movie start, so I was torn whether to pull over and gawk or just keep driving. I decided on the latter. About a minute later, after a couple of course turns, I was again facing west. I looked up for a moment as I drove and could see that the contrail had dissipated and that the aircraft seemed to no longer be emitting pulses (although it was too quick a glance to be really sure of this). I could not tell if the lack of pulsing was because of atmospheric changes, sun angle changes (it had traversed a good portion of the sky by then and was much farther away and lower on the horizon to my far right), or because the pulsing was no longer occurring. I believe the constant contrail portion was still being generated. We never heard any aircraft sound, but we were in our vehicle during the whole sighting with the windows up.

I asked Bill Sweetman, a prominent aerospace journalist & author who has published a book on this rumored aircraft (right), to offer his comments on the account detailed above. (I sat behind him at a recent UCAV Symposium in Alexandria, Virginia.) He wrote briefly:   -----Original Message----- From: Billsweetman Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 5:39 AM To: Stayne Hoff Subject: RE: UCAV 2003 Thanks... It's a strange world out there. I have seen all kinds of "natural" ruffled contrails but none where the trail seems to "bloom" straight from the exhaust.

(click pic to buy book)