DHS "Rubber Duck" Footage

[Rory]

Do we know the wind direction for that day? Ny_uap, the guy who originally released the video posted some info on Instagram about the weather conditions at that location for that date. The average wind speed was 8mph but he didn't get the direction.

I don't know where you'd get wind info for an empty bit of desert in Arizona. I searched for Sasabe here and it reverts to Nogales, 36 miles away, which could be completely different.



(Was it around 2am?)

Doesn't seem very helpful. Though I do notice the same page says "maximum wind speed 8mph" for that day in Nogales.

 

[flarkey]

Here is the sounding data from a weather balloon launched 3 hrs after the event and 50 Miles North. (Credit @chris spitzer)

 

[Mick West]

Nice work Mick. I think the issue with the Flightradar24 data for IRONS21 is that it's MLAT data, not ADSB which is, by definition, much less accurate.

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/how-we-track-flights-with-mlat/

Darn, I should have spotted that. I thought it was only in some segments of the flight, but it looks like it's all of it. Still, the short distance is still valid.

It's a shame we don't have the full video with GPS, as that would give all the information needed.

 

[Mick West]

I don't know where you'd get wind info for an empty bit of desert in Arizona.

Use earth.nullschool.net. The altitude is probably somewhere between 850mb (1450m) and 700mb (3000m), you can change the date and time, and then click on the map and edit the URL to set an exact location, like
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/...raphic=-109.43,28.16,2443/loc=-111.440,31.510




This essentially incorporates the sounding data, but creates a more detailed model that should be more accurate for other locations.

 

[Mendel]

Looks like the lines of sight converge on one point 31.515832°N -111.439852°E at an alt of 2524m

I snagged the sparse ADS-B JSON data for IRONS12 from FR24, extracted only the raw coordinates for the 40 minutes the UFO is tracked and converted to a KML path. The plane circles 11 times, but only moves (northwest) less than ten miles.

10 miles in 40 minutes is 15 mph (13 knots), so the duck's speed would be less than that.
To blow the object north-west, the wind would come from south-east, which is around 110-160 degrees.

Do we know the wind direction for that day? Ny_uap, the guy who originally released the video posted some info on Instagram about the weather conditions at that location for that date. The average wind speed was 8mph but he didn't get the direction.

Where did he source that?

 

[Mendel]

Here is the sounding data from a weather balloon launched 3 hrs after the event and 50 Miles North.

Looks like an ok match, 135° is exactly Southeast, and 10 knots is less than 13 knots (and the wind speed may have changed a little during those 3 hours).

The wind data is compatible with the idea that the duck is wind-driven.
If it has a propulsion system, it doesn't show a lot of speed.

 

[Rory]

Does anyone think they hid the coordinates on purpose? It's not as if there was a great reason to do so - and with them there it's very easy to see that it wasn't travelling anywhere near the claimed "90-200mph".

 

[jarlrmai]

Does anyone think they hid the coordinates on purpose? It's not as if there was a great reason to do so - and with them there it's very easy to see that it wasn't travelling anywhere near the claimed "90-200mph".

There also no reason not to release the unredacted version given the flight is on FR24.

 

[jhunsley]

Where did he source that?

I don't know, he's blocked me now so I can't look

 

[Rory]

I don't know, he's blocked me now so I can't look

Or is the account gone?

 

[JMartJr]

Looking at the GPS Mick used to plot the arc of the airplane and the ground track of where the camera was pointing and the lines between them (see Post 33 or Mick's vid), I noted that the middle line is almost exactly ten minutes before the vaguely duck shaped pond passes through our view (as I noted in Post 18.)

Rory spotted the pond, thanks for that, I was looking way too far west! The "pond" is called Castle Rock Tank. Before I noticed that it has a name, I was thinking of it as the Duck Pond, for its shape, and it is labeled that way in images below.

So, here are those two positions:


Assumptions made: The UFO is very close to the crossing lines in Mick's post, which I think is a good assumption, and the UFO is over the "duck pond," which is not exactly accurate, more on that below.

Looking at the distances between those points using the Doing-Math-Myself-free technique of zooming in on Google Earth until the points marked are the size of the scale at lower left, we get this:


That distance is approximately 6,189 feet. Traveling that far in ten minutes translates to a hair over 7 miles per hour. HOWEVER...

Now, as mentioned above, the UFO is not exactly over the Duck Pond. Here is a pic from the plane looking past the UFO (seen right of center just above the road) towards Castle Rock Tank:


And here is the Tank on Google Earth.


I make it that the plane is looking back at the pond from roughly NNW, with the curving road past the Tank.

Now this bit somebody feel free to correct me about -- I am reading a range from camera to center of image of 3.8 NM call it 4.3 statute miles. If my understanding of what that number means is off, please feel free to correct me! Assuming our UFO is roughly halfway between the plane and the point on the ground where the camera is aimed, the UFO is, roughly, 2 miles NNWish of Castle Rock Tanks instead of right over it. To travel that extra two miles in the ten minutes we're looking at, we'd need to speed up Rubber Duckie up by another 14 miles an hour or so, for an average speed during those ten minutes of around 21 miles per hour.

CAVEAT: Since it does not look like the UFO traveled directly over the pond, but passed West of it to a position 2 miles or so NNW of it, the actual distance traveed will be slightly less. And if the UFO is closer to the aim point of the camera than it is to the plane, as Mick's plot seems to suggest, then the distance traveled is again slightly less. So the figure of 21 mph is giving our little duck-shaped friend the very highest speed possible, while noting that the real speed is likely a couple ofmph less. (If those few mph are critical to anybody with math skills that exceed mine, feel free to refine, but assuming I am interpretting the meaning of the "SLNT 3.8 NM" correct, I am confident that this speed is pretty close.


My conclusion: The claims being made that the UFO was traveling at 100-200 miles per hour are not supported by the distance it travels between two points in 10 minutes.

EDIT/ADDENDUM -- I wish I had looked one more time before posting, on further review it looks to me like we are looking from the plane past the UFO to the Tank more from WNW, which shortens the line the UFO traveled by a decent chunk, if it is 2 miles or so from the Tank. That leaves the 21 miles per hour as the very highest speed I could come up with at that distance from the Tank, too high as the UFO is a bit W and S of where I'd first assumes. So it is slower than my 21 mph figure, perhaps closer to 17. I'll mess wih it more after a pause to clear my brain from trying to visualize angles to he Tank, and giving anybody a chance to spot if I made any egregious errors in my assumptions.

 

[Dilophosaurus]

I find a number of these circular reservoirs in the area between Vamori and San Miguel, the general area of the "ball of yarn" flight track. I have not yet found any along other parts of the flight track .

This one is a decent match, but not definitively so to my eye.

This (coincidentally mildly duck shaped) water feature:

From a few minutes earlier ought to be easier to match, I have not found it yet but since it's not about me and my personal glory I toss it out therefor anybody else who can spot it. If we could find it, and identify the circular lake wth confidence, the time and distance between them would give us a rough idea of speed of the object.

Like this? Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/q4uvks/rubber_duck_video_images_to_coordinates/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

 

[flarkey]

So it appears that our friend @davefalch has deleted his Twitter account, and also his analysis of the Rubber Duck video from YouTube (his other videos remain). He had previously posted an un-redacted version of the RubberDuck video on YouTube but he quickly deleted that too. Hmmm.

This was from the source of the video.....

 

[taurusclover21]

So it appears that our friend @davefalch has deleted his Twitter account, and also his analysis of the Rubber Duck video from YouTube (his other videos remain). He had previously posted an un-redacted version of the RubberDuck video on YouTube but he quickly deleted that too. Hmmm.

Just read that on Lehto's channel:

Unfortunately Dave Falch had to remove his YouTube and Twitter accounts as of 12 Oct 2021. He "was advised to reformat his YouTube channel." Hopefully, he can still come on the show. We won't have access to his footage but he can still comment as a FLIR expert.

Content from External Source

 

[Mick West]

Falch has removed all his thermal camera footage. The mostly likely explanation is that his employer was unhappy with him posting about their equipment in this context. It's a shame as he had some useful videos, even if his interpretation of them was off.

 

[flarkey]

Dave Falch is a contributor to SCU, who are (rumour has it) are investing Rubber Duck as a genuine UAP with a large report to follow (as per Aguadilla). My guess is that his unredacted video and subsequent analysis goes against what SCU have 'found', but hey I've always been a bit of a conspiracy theorist.

 

[jarlrmai]

Dave Falch is a contributor to SCU, who are (rumour has it) are investing Rubber Duck as a genuine UAP with a large report to follow (as per Aguadilla). My guess is that his unredacted video and subsequent analysis goes against what SCU have 'found', but hey I've always been a bit of a conspiracy theorist.

Yup likely the 'opsec' was poor allowing us the small glimpse of the lat/longs. If we had the full video unredacted we could have done a really good track.

Cats out of the bag now though and given the flight is on FR24 etc there absolutely no reason what so ever to not release the unredacted video to allow the full lat longs to be traced.

I also saw a Reddit thread where some politically questionable tweets by Dave were linked.

 

[Mick West]

Dave Falch is a contributor to SCU, who are (rumour has it) are investing Rubber Duck as a genuine UAP with a large report to follow (as per Aguadilla). My guess is that his unredacted video and subsequent analysis goes against what SCU have 'found', but hey I've always been a bit of a conspiracy theorist.

SCU would not have him remove ALL his FLIR videos. The only thing that really makes sense is his employer not being happy with him using company equipment to make UFO videos.

 

[SkepticSteve]

So a narco drone covered in icebags. Interesting.

 

[FastIndy]

SCU would not have him remove ALL his FLIR videos. The only thing that really makes sense is his employer not being happy with him using company equipment to make UFO videos.

Agreed. With his latest videos I was loving the explanations of the systems and some new thermal footage, but I knew it was flirting with the edge of proprietary or ITAR-controlled information. The federal government takes ITAR and deemed exports very, very seriously. As an individual, you can get whacked with a $1M fine per export, with the opportunity to visit fun and exciting new prison locations in addition to that.

 

[Mendel]

The federal government takes ITAR and deemed exports very, very seriously.

The obvious solution to that would have been to configure the Youtube videos to be restricted to US viewing, and let Youtube worry about the rest?

 

[jhunsley]

Chris Letho hosted a very good live discussion on the Rubber Duck video with Dave Falch, Andy (ny_uap) and another ex Airforce guy called Michael. You can view it here - Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1ncm5iHUmk&t=5173s


It was a refreshingly good analysis from the people present. Michael was very good and gave some possible explanations for the object, including a balloon with a steerable parachute on used by the military to deliver packages to teams on the ground. I asked whether they all agreed that it has been proven beyond doubt that the object is something moving on the wind 4000ft above the ground. The consensus was yes.

 

[FastIndy]

The obvious solution to that would have been to configure the Youtube videos to be restricted to US viewing, and let Youtube worry about the rest?

I don't want to drag this conversation off too far into the weeds about ITAR, but I'll provide a little more detail since the systems that we are concerned with most definitely utilize designs and information that fall under the purview of ITAR. Everywhere I say "export" I'm referring to a transfer of information or technology to either an outside foreign nation or a foreign national living inside the United States. This also doesn't cover any proprietary/NDA agreements which would certainly also apply here and cause further restrictions.

ITAR regulations are intentionally broad and sweeping, and seek to regulate a pretty large swath of technical data, drawings, manuals, and general information and knowledge that can be used by foreign defense against the interests of the US. Essentially if you have data, technology, or software that can be used for defense purposes and it is not the topic of previously released public academic research, then the transfer is restricted to US persons. On top of the broad category of foreign nationals, you also can't release information to ANY agency of certain blacklisted countries. There are also corporations and individuals inside the US that have been debarred from exporting.

To post content on YouTube and just restrict to US viewing is inadequate for the main reason that foreign nationals also reside inside the United States. If a person were to do that then effectively they have exported that technology to a foreign national without an authorization. For a FLIR system of the type that we're looking at here, to provide any kind of deeper technical information beyond the basic physics would be flirting with prosecution.

To further drive this home, if I was carrying technical data in an un-encrypted USB stick and temporarily allowed that stick out of my sight while passing through a security checkpoint at a foreign airport, I could be prosecuted for an unauthorized export. Just talking about it makes me a little bit tight around the collar.