spanky15805
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Stealth F-117 Nighthawks Make Surprise Visit To Marine Corps Air Station Miramar
Wonder what call signs they are using?
Wonder what call signs they are using?
F-117's in San Diego!
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Just a guess but you would think a stealth aircraft would also have stealth communications.
trixwagen
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Nah. The tower still has to hear them. I believe safety would override concealment. Though I've been wrong before.
freqhopping
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I've just started reviewing LiveATC recordings for Miramar. In the Oct-20-2020-1930Z recording there is a KNIGHT/NIGHT01 flight landing there. The controller welcomes him and asks if he is familiar. Pilot says he's not familiar but he'll figure it out. He's guided to a hangar. No type is mentioned. KNIGHT is a documented callsign that was used by Holloman F-117s.
Other flight types are mentioned. Several flights of F-16s are heard in the earlier recording, so there seems to be more visitors there.
Other flight types are mentioned. Several flights of F-16s are heard in the earlier recording, so there seems to be more visitors there.
not with ATC.
spanky15805
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The call sign was indeed KNIGHT1.
I tried to lock an instrumentation radar on one once and I'm not supposed to tell you the outcome of that. A 117 also crashed on a friends ranch years ago and even after the military dug up and hauled away several feet of topsoil in the area, years of rain started to expose some bits and pieces in the soil. I've always wanted to visit the crash site to dig around.
Are you talking about the bakersfield crash? I saw a youtube video about that once some people ventured out there to find the site and memorial headstone or something? It was not as easy as they thought to find. They even had a drone to look around. As far as aircraft parts I did not see if they found anything?
I think the ranch is officially in Lockwood Valley but the owners call the area Ozena Valley. Its roughly at the intersection of Lockwood Valley Rd and Hwy 33 east and a little south of Frazier Park. I believe the crash site is a few mi south east of that intersection and I'm told you need a good 4wd or motorcycle to get there. I've been part way there on horseback but I didn't have exact instructions and I'm not that good at driving a horse.
spacellamaman
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well there are many things i am not supposed to do that i revel in. frankly i find it more fun if i am not supposed to do it. it's a very satisfying approach to life in my opinion.
so go ahead, free your soul! it'll be our little secret
I don't have any pictures of my F-117 encounter but I did get about 20 minutes of it on video from the camera on the trailer pictured below and that had to go into a Govt secure vault. I pointed the radar thing in the first picture at the 117 as it was heading into Nellis AFB and it circled the base for quite awhile before landing, so I got great hi-res video of all sides and the bottom of the 117. I can't discuss the details of what the radar did or didn't do.
The second picture shows a JANET flight on the ground and an AWACS taking off. These pictures were 35mm film with a 70mm lens so you can get an idea how close we were to the runway at Nellis and we had a 1,200mm zoom lens on the video camera. With that lens we could see lots of details of who was boarding or getting off the JANET flights every day or the pilots faces as they were heading down the runway, etc.
One day I was working outside and plugged in about 100ft of cable to the trailer intercom headset and got about 50ft from the edge of the center of the runway while a B-1B was taking off. Bad idea and I probably still have hearing damage from that. I kind of miss the good times I had at that job.
The second picture shows a JANET flight on the ground and an AWACS taking off. These pictures were 35mm film with a 70mm lens so you can get an idea how close we were to the runway at Nellis and we had a 1,200mm zoom lens on the video camera. With that lens we could see lots of details of who was boarding or getting off the JANET flights every day or the pilots faces as they were heading down the runway, etc.
One day I was working outside and plugged in about 100ft of cable to the trailer intercom headset and got about 50ft from the edge of the center of the runway while a B-1B was taking off. Bad idea and I probably still have hearing damage from that. I kind of miss the good times I had at that job.
well there are many things i am not supposed to do that i revel in. frankly i find it more fun if i am not supposed to do it. it's a very satisfying approach to life in my opinion.
so go ahead, free your soul! it'll be our little secret
spanky15805
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...oh, you were on the other side of the tracks runway...
Token
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When was this crash? The July 1986 crash of #792 was northwest of Bakersfield, near highway 178 (you could see the light of the fire from 178), I was not aware of another F-117A crash in the wild in SoCal.
T!
I don't know exactly but I think it was before the public knew they existed. The first time I heard about it was talking with the property owner in the early 90s and it had happened years before that.
Looking at the info for the #792 crash, that was about 12mi northwest of Bakersfield. The one I'm familiar with would have been about 35-40mi south of Bakersfield.
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