Aircraft with strange protrusion (photos)

Spotted this flying in a big loop over southeast Arizona:



Note the object coming off the front-right of the fuselage.

Other photos:
Wider Shot With Contrail
Weird Contrail Left Behind

Any ideas what it is?

(Apologies if this is in the wrong forum—I'm never quite sure where to post threads like this)

Holy cow, its huge too, almost the size of another engine. Could it be some sort of live engine test?



Maybe a side car for unruly passengers?!

Here's another shot of it:

Its a Boeing 707/C-135 derivative of some sort and it definitely looks like an engine test bed but it is a very odd place to mount an engine, even for test purposes.

Has this aircraft been spotted near Marana? Check out Evergreen Aviation, they're always doing nutty things to big boeings, involving heavy lift, split fuselages and large loading doors. The 747 airtanker has been doing test drops where it lay a 1 mile wide swath of slurry several miles long, summat like 25sq miles of coverage for one aircraft.

There are a lot of strange aircraft flying around the desert.

it's either a sleeping-cabin...Or a giant web-cam..
Or a bathroom with swimmingpool...
Or a bar... A discotek...A dancehall..

Or - a TownHALL!!

WOW. that is so strange!!!

maybe it's some kind of weird new radar there testing.

I Can't see it being an engine to be honest, but who knows, we can't rule anything out. It's just..an engine..above the cockpit? or near the cockpit?? WEIRD!!!

Maybe there testing the effects of drag on that aircraft? lol.. a bit strange though to do it that way, as there is such things as wind tunnels and computers.

[edit on 22-12-2005 by clashrock]

[edit on 22-12-2005 by clashrock]

Man im just laughing about the floor imagining a 747 dumping several tons of slurry on an unsuspecting foe...must be an advanced non-lethal weapon system to be used in Iraq

It may be the laser that the USAF is working on that destroys long distance missiles. If it was spotted over Arizona, it may have been coming from or going to Area 51 ( I know that sounds horribly cliche), an may have been flying to see if th attachment caused any drag or other problems during flight.

I thought the ABL had the laser mounted in the nose...maybe im wrong.The picture reminds me of all those bizarre EC-135 aircraft that mounted telescopes for monitoring Soviet and US ICBM launches.

[edit on 22-12-2005 by bmdefiant]

It looks like an extra engine. Like they're testing one, to make sure how it will perform.

Well, it was flying in an east-west loop, with the westernmost part of the loop in the area of Fort Huachuca.

Also, the airborne laser looks like this: www.boeing.com...

Its an engine that is undergoing testing. Locheeds L1011 had the capacity to carry a third engine on the wing to ferry it to another location.

Waynos, perhaps this is the location they chose as the engine is pretty small and perhaps the 707 needed the thrust of its main engines to get off the ground??

Here's one other photo I got of the contrails:

Most contrails I see don't do that. What causes that sort of thing to happen? For reference, several minutes after this plane left the area, another aircraft flew over in the same location, though headed northwest rather than west. Here's what its contrails looked like:


And a close-up further along:

Originally posted by TheRanchMan
It may be the laser that the USAF is working on that destroys long distance missiles. If it was spotted over Arizona, it may have been coming from or going to Area 51 ( I know that sounds horribly cliche), an may have been flying to see if th attachment caused any drag or other problems during flight.

I agree, this is probably the best answer.

It would appear that those saying it is an extra engine are correct—this photo (the last one, I swear! Unless I get another one with something great...) clearly shows a smaller contrail coming from the object on the side:


(And if you're wondering why the picture quality is so different in several of them, it came around in several passes at different altitudes and when it was closer, the image is sharper. Also, several I took with another camera that has higher resolution than my personal one.)

[edit on 22-12-2005 by LoganCale]

I very much doubt it is an engine - even with the above photo.



This is the test for the GE90 (777 engine) on a 747 test-bed.


You cannot just mount an engine on to the fuselage, there is no piping, the structures are not there to deal with the forces etc etc.

It doesn't make sense to me for it to be an engine - more likely an electronic based pod (be it radar/laser etc etc).

Originally posted by noise

Originally posted by TheRanchMan
It may be the laser that the USAF is working on that destroys long distance missiles. If it was spotted over Arizona, it may have been coming from or going to Area 51 ( I know that sounds horribly cliche), an may have been flying to see if th attachment caused any drag or other problems during flight.

I agree, this is probably the best answer.

I don't think it's the best answer, that would be the worst place to put a laser because if the target tracks to the opposite side of the cabin, well oops, there goes the cabin, blown up by the laser.

So anyways, I've seen the ABL, it's a nose mounted laser system that is mounted on a 747.

I think it's an engine test.

Shattered OUT...

Kilcoo, that is true, but what if it is merely testing the aerodynamic properties of a new cowling/pylon combination? No plumbing is required for that and it is also mounted ahead of the disturbed airflow from the wings aft. This might also explain a smaller contrail from what is clearly a bigger engine, it may be more of a vortex than a contrail.

Originally posted by kilcoo316
I very much doubt it is an engine - even with the above photo.
It doesn't make sense to me for it to be an engine - more likely an electronic based pod (be it radar/laser etc etc).

How else would you test one? In your picture the engine that replaced the usual engine was of a higher thrust class than the one it replaced. However, if you want to test a smaller engine you may have trouble getting off the ground given the reduced and asymetrical thrust.

Also mounting an engine in that manner should prove to be no problem esp if its a dedicated test bed. Here is a picture of a 707 with a PW150 turboprop in the front: