About a year ago I spotted something in the sky, a barely visible white chevron. Turns out a local resident made Internet fame by snapping a good pic of the same flyover. We probably saw the RW-180.
Today I’m walking Paulie and I hear “multiengine jet at altitude” and see a contrail, from a slotted exhaust, with an indistinct white triangle at its tip. This is with my rather bad unaided eyes. I watched the contrail play “variations on the theme of racetrack orbit” in J minor.
After I got back with pup, I lucked into another pass, grabbed my 15x glass and spotted that white chevron laying down a ribbon exhaust. I ran in for the 20 x pair, and no contrail!
Either it had just gone above or below contrail altitude (contrails were a thing of exceeding rarity this summer. Since airliners pass overhead at cruising altitude, this suggests the upper atmosphere is different this season.) or it had throttled back for descent into Palmdale.
I got a coupla snaps of the Headless Horseman this time.
View attachment 5009685
Web image of the airframe. Appears twin-engined. Wingspan 130 feet, speculated operating altitude 60 thousand feet.
