Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

My first UFO story:

I was ~13 years old in The Civil Ait Patrol, this occurred in Truckee, Ca at the Truckee Airport.

We were doing standard marching exercises and our troop leader was a former SR-71 mechanic/maint person...

It was a full moon - and as our gatherings typically started after 5PM - it got dark fairly quickly.

We were marching and then looking to the mountain line in the horizon, we saw a light come up over the mountain line and fly vertically up at a steady clip as it was near the moon which had also just risen over the ridge.

We all watched, speculating what type of plane this was (Civil Air Patrol was like the cub scouts for the air force)

As we watched and guessed, this craft flew straight up from the mountain - then directly toward us.

I came to a complete hover just above us by about 300 feet. The craft was the classic triangular shape with large round whit lights at each corner.

As it hovered - the troop leader said "OK KIDS - EVERYONE INSIDE NOW!!!" and he ushered us into the end of the hangar building that had our CAP office.

Ever since then.... I've had an interesting relationship with believing UFOs...

Kinda sounds like the long rumored TR-3B ( http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/tr-3b/ ). I love UFO mythology, and that around the TR-3B is wild, to say the least.

During a summer break jaunt to see the American Flag Art Exhibit in 1996 (found it! http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/08/us/art-or-trash-arizona-ex...), I was coming back down the 10 just past Wiley's Rest Stop, in California and pulled off the road into the desert about 500 yards from the highway. It was me with my best friend (from kindergarten) and 2 sisters we were mutually involved with. No drugs, no alcohol, no cell phones, and some remaining film in a disposable did nothing in a pitch black night. Playing truth or dare around a makeshift fire, one sister saw 3 lights moving toward us. It took awhile to wrap our heads around what it was, till it was blocking out stars. I have been on aircraft carriers and cruise ships prior. This thing blocked out a lot of the sky, as it passed silently overhead. It was either equivalent (but larger in surface area) to an aircraft carrier or larger than a couple city blocks if it was higher (impossible to tell how high it was in the pitch black desert). We killed the fire pretty quick, but it just passed silently overhead without further incident. It flew on toward the southeast over a the mountains in the distance. Unlike a lot of other videos and reports, there was no center light (red or otherwise).

Could it have been a thick stray cloud combined with some light reflection/refraction effects from the ground or maybe stars/planets in the background ?

I respect the skepticism. I do not subscribe to the 'UFOs are aliens' idea myself. Though in this case I believe the OP did see what he claims. There's a longstanding rumor that some branch of the armed forces is in possession of a 'stealth blimp'. Exactly what a 'stealth blimp' is, I don't know. But there have been numerous sightings over the previous 20 years that match very closely with that OP saw.

I think most "credible" UFO sightings (especially those in the western US) are Government owned aircraft. For the most part, Humans are just bad at interpreting what they have seen. One of my favorite examples is the rumored "flying artichoke" that was likely just a sighting of an F-117A Stealth Fighter ( http://i.imgur.com/D22OrQ1.jpg )

A "stealth blimp" has been sighted numerous times for at least 20 years now. It is said to be very large, just as you describe. The assumption is that it's an observational aircraft of some sort.

Im pretty sure that is it.

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