NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
With the big drone flap going in NJ, the wife pointed out something strange looking last night. We were on the way home, down our little road, from a little Christmas cheer at the neighbors when my wife said "Look at that UFO!" Sure enough there was a large lighted object in the sky, but low on the horizon that really did appear to just hover in place. Totally zoomed in with an iPhone 16 Pro, so video quality isn't very good:
The power pole is maybe 150'-175' from us and the closest trees are 200' with more further out. Beyond the trees is the valley with HYW 99 just visible in the lower right corner. I'm in the hills at about 1100' elevation taking this video.
It most definitely looked big, though as is the case it's hard to tell how far away it is. There was no sound, what you hear is our vehicle and then some other neighbors passing us. My first thought was an aircraft, but it was way too low on the horizon for something that large. The Sacramento airport (SMF) is ~85 miles away, but planes heading in there are usually at about 1600' when they pass over. Some large fire fighting aircraft will fly over or near by at low altitudes like this object, but I can usually hear them, they don't operate at night and there was no fire.
Of course right after I stopped recording it "disappeared". Trust me bro! At least my wife thought so for a second, but if we kept looking it could still be seen, but now much fainter and starting to move left. I really thought aircraft now, it had been heading towards us, appearing to hover, and had now turned, but why so much dimmer? It's like it had its landing lights on when heading towards us, but it sure didn't look like a little Cessna or similar plane. It looked big.
Unfortunately for mystery mongering, I checked FlightAware as soon as I was done recording and right in the middle was a big 4 engine aircraft heading right at us:
Why so low though? Clicking on the AC in question, showed it to be HEATY45 doing circles at only 3600'. It originated at Travis AFB (SUU) which is home to a lot of really big C5s and C17s:
Turned out he had come up from Travis and was doing touch and gos at Beal AFB:
We were just in the right place and the right time to see him heading towards us with his landing lights on, then turn to head in to Beal. I went back out after I realized what he was doing, but could never capture it the same way.
I can definitely say, it looked strange. Much to large to be small plane in the distance so maybe a car sized drone closer would have made sense. It appeared far to low on the horizon to for a very large aircraft with no actual airport close enough. If someone wasn't versed in trying to use a flight tracker, or just didn't think of it, it was a definitely UFO or drone. Likewise had the flight not shown up on FlightAware, which sometime they don't, it would have been a bit of a mystery.
He appears to have spent the rest of the evening doing touch and goes:
The C5 Galaxy:
And the "smaller" C17 Globemaster:
The power pole is maybe 150'-175' from us and the closest trees are 200' with more further out. Beyond the trees is the valley with HYW 99 just visible in the lower right corner. I'm in the hills at about 1100' elevation taking this video.
It most definitely looked big, though as is the case it's hard to tell how far away it is. There was no sound, what you hear is our vehicle and then some other neighbors passing us. My first thought was an aircraft, but it was way too low on the horizon for something that large. The Sacramento airport (SMF) is ~85 miles away, but planes heading in there are usually at about 1600' when they pass over. Some large fire fighting aircraft will fly over or near by at low altitudes like this object, but I can usually hear them, they don't operate at night and there was no fire.
Of course right after I stopped recording it "disappeared". Trust me bro! At least my wife thought so for a second, but if we kept looking it could still be seen, but now much fainter and starting to move left. I really thought aircraft now, it had been heading towards us, appearing to hover, and had now turned, but why so much dimmer? It's like it had its landing lights on when heading towards us, but it sure didn't look like a little Cessna or similar plane. It looked big.
Unfortunately for mystery mongering, I checked FlightAware as soon as I was done recording and right in the middle was a big 4 engine aircraft heading right at us:
Why so low though? Clicking on the AC in question, showed it to be HEATY45 doing circles at only 3600'. It originated at Travis AFB (SUU) which is home to a lot of really big C5s and C17s:
Turned out he had come up from Travis and was doing touch and gos at Beal AFB:
We were just in the right place and the right time to see him heading towards us with his landing lights on, then turn to head in to Beal. I went back out after I realized what he was doing, but could never capture it the same way.
I can definitely say, it looked strange. Much to large to be small plane in the distance so maybe a car sized drone closer would have made sense. It appeared far to low on the horizon to for a very large aircraft with no actual airport close enough. If someone wasn't versed in trying to use a flight tracker, or just didn't think of it, it was a definitely UFO or drone. Likewise had the flight not shown up on FlightAware, which sometime they don't, it would have been a bit of a mystery.
He appears to have spent the rest of the evening doing touch and goes:
The C5 Galaxy:
And the "smaller" C17 Globemaster:
)
