Originally posted by befast

Fact: If two similar aircraft are at the same altitude and flight path one can't leave a contrail without the other leaving one also. Either they both do or they both don't.

Observation: On several occations I have witnessed one aircraft leaving a contrail that doesn't dissipate while all other aircraft in the area leave none

Off_The_Street, who has an incredibly well formulated response, I should add, specifically adresses this. Airplanes fly at ~33,000 feet. That high, you have NO depth perception. An airplane could be at 10,000 feet, where conditions are right for persistent contrails, while another in the same horizontal space but another 10k feet higher might not leave them as the conditions at 20k feet aren't right. Unless you have some way of measuring altitude, it's probably your eyes playing tricks on you - you have NO frame of reference against the sky.

Contrails that start and stop are easily explained by the fact that the atmosphere is turbulent and non-homogenous. Conditions aren't right everywhere - remember those 'air holes' and 'turbulence' while you're on a flight?

My apologies to everyone who bothered to read Off_The_Stree's awesome awesome post - but some points just always need restating. I think that the public at large should be taught about Occam's Razor before conspiracy theories - if there are two explanations to something, it's usually the simpler one that's right. For example: There are strange contrails in the atmoshphere.

Explanation 1: The evil aliens / NWO / Zionists / Your Mom are spraying mind-control chemicals so we'll like getting butt probed better. Or, the government/corporations are doing it despite no observable financial benefit.

Explanation 2: Ice crystals condense in the wake of a jet engine.

Figure it out for yourself.

Originally posted by befast

Fact: If two similar aircraft are at the same altitude and flight path one can't leave a contrail without the other leaving one also. Either they both do or they both don't.

Observation: On several occations I have witnessed one aircraft leaving a contrail that doesn't dissipate while all other aircraft in the area leave none

I have to say that I disagree with this. All factors being the same yes its true, but from the ground how can you tell if all factors are the same?

What I mean is that there are aircraft specific factors that could contribute to the formation of contrails. The age, type, and altitude being a few factors I can think of off the top of my head. Older planes have less efficient engines, insulation, and may be running with a higher engine temperature, or less ability to reduce condensation due to inferior insulation.

In addition, two 747’s although they may look alike from the ground may not in reality be so. For instance, most of the 747’s that I used to work on had GE engines on them, but British Airways always had Rolls Royce engines on theirs. A better more efficient engine may run cooler and not have the same difference to the air temperature around it.

The third thing that I see wrong with this idea is how can you tell what altitude two different planes are flying at from the ground?
You cannot, your just eyeballing it. There is no way to prove that there is not a couple 1000 feet difference between them in altitude.

The fourth is insulation on other parts such as the wings. Here in Florida MD-80’s ALWAYS come in with their wings frosted up. They are the only plane I have worked on that always come in with frost on it, different types of planes do some of the time if the weather is just right, but these do ALL of the time. It is poor insulation around the fuel tanks on this type of aircraft, and it is something that only happens on occasion to other planes.

Originally posted by befast
The one thing my Dad taught me that I remember most, is what a contrail was. He explained how at higher altitudes the water vapor (ice crystals) in the air would get heated as it went through the engine and come out as steam, that is why it always dissipated shortly behind the plane. He also told me the plane itself can sometimes make a contrail from the surface heat generated by air friction, like you see on the wing tips of fighter jets at high speed.

That is sad, and yet poingnant at the same time.

Originally posted by defcon5

The fourth is insulation on other parts such as the wings. Here in Florida MD-80’s ALWAYS come in with their wings frosted up. They are the only plane I have worked on that always come in with frost on it, different types of planes do some of the time if the weather is just right, but these do ALL of the time. It is poor insulation around the fuel tanks on this type of aircraft, and it is something that only happens on occasion to other planes.

Ice formation on the wings is an aerodynamic phenomena.

If enough ice builds up, it can change the shape of the airfoil causing the wings to lose lift.

Originally posted by HowardRoark

Ice formation on the wings is an aerodynamic phenomena.

If enough ice builds up, it can change the shape of the airfoil causing the wings to lose lift.

Yes but on MD-80 aircraft, an insulation issue makes them more prone to this happening, at least according to the mechanics I asked about it.

I am not talking about heavy ice, like on a winter lake; it was more like a layer of heavy frost. The ramp agents used to scrape off handfuls of it and make snowballs, while the temperature outside could be 80 or 90 degrees. None of the other equipment would come in with frost on their wings in the middle of a summer day, in Florida.


Forgot a bracket


[edit on 9/24/2004 by defcon5]

befast says:

"Fact: If two similar aircraft are at the same altitude and flight path one can't leave a contrail without the other leaving one also. Either they both do or they both don't.

Observation: On several occations I have witnessed one aircraft leaving a contrail that doesn't dissipate while all other aircraft in the area leave none.”

Since the typical altitude of aircraft leaving contrails is around six miles, there’s no possible way you can determine if two aircraft are even with two or three thousand feet of each other vertically. If you’re like me and your eyes are about three inches apart, the best distance you can use for depth perception is about 750 feet. Any further, and you need visual cues like trees, houses, mountains, etc to determine which object is closer. There aren’t any visual cues when you look straight up -- there’s nothing but air! And remember, there can be a threshold differential (either temperature or humidity) at an altitude delta of only a couple hundred feet.

“Fact: An aircraft can not turn a contrail on and off at will. The water content of the air in which the aircraft is traveling may change, in turn increasing or decreasing how much contrail is being produced, but it can't just stop and start in short segments.”

See the example in my first post. If the temperature is below minus 40 deg and the air is saturated, the contrails will persist, if either of those conditions do not obtain, the contrail ice will sublime within a minute or so. It is that simple. And you know that you have those sudden changes in the atmosphere -- that’s why clouds have edges!

”Fact: If the water content of the air is too low a contrail can not be produced. This condition being very common in states like Arizone and New mexico but can acure any where in the U.S. being more likely in the western states.”

Not necessarily. It is not a matter of the “water content” alone but of the relative humidity, which is a function of both water content and temperature. At minus 40 degrees, it only takes about one one-hundredth the amount of water molecules per specified volume of air to saturate it as it would if the temperature were, say, 90 deg F.

It’s easy to see how important temperature is to saturation. Fill a glass full of room temperature water, then add sugar, a spoonful at a time, and stir vigorously until it’s dissolved. Sooner or later, you’ll reach a point where, no matter how much you stir, no more sugar will dissolve; in other words, the water is saturated.

Now put the water in the microwave and zap it for a minute or so. You will notice that the extra sugar will dissolve, and you can add another couple of tablespoons (as long as the water is hot) and it will dissolve. This experiment shows graphically the importance of temperature on saturation, whether of sugar in water or of water vapor in air. It also explains such things as “supersaturation”; but that’s not really germane to this discussion.

”Fact: Ariel spraying of any type, like crop dusting for example, does not get performed in high wind conditions. High wind conditions making it too difficult to contain spraying to targeted area for the crop dusting example. Observation: I have yet to see any non-dissapating contrails on very windy days.”

At the levels at which contrails appear, there is a high energy wind pattern called the Jet Stream. Although the air may be still where you are on the ground, it’s not that way at 35,000 feet altitude; a quick check with Flight Explorer will show you that.

”Fact: Contrails are usually only produced at higher altitudes but may occur at lower altitudes in very rare conditions. Observation: Almost all non-dissapating contrails that I have witnessed have been at lower altitudes. I have even witnessed an aircraft make a tight U-turn at an altitude no higher then low cloud cover, leaving a non-dissapating contrail which visibly expanding while falling to ground level in no more then half an hour.

I haven’t, and all the photographs I see of “chemtrails” show contrails at very high altitudes.

”Fact: The Air Force currently has a large inventory of the no longer produced McDonald Dougles DC-10 that have been converted to tanker aircraft. Observation: I have personally seen these aircraft at Travis Air Force Base in Vacaville, Ca.”

So have I, and my former employer is McDonnell Douglas, not “McDonald Dougles” And I have personally seen these aircraft all over, including Delta flight 86,, Los Angeles to Tokyo, which I personally flew four times in 2001. Most DC-10s have been converted to cargo carriers, and, as you said, the Air Force has many tanker versions, called KC-10s, in its inventory.

Are you saying that is some sort of evidence for the existence of a "chemtrail" plot?

“Fact: All aircraft excluding some small single engine aircraft have the ability to dump there fuel loads in preperation and likelihood of a crash landing.”

True. Most aircraft can jettison their fuel loads in case of an emergency landing, to improve the plane’s handling characteristics, and to lessen the chance of fire upon landing.

”Observation: I can't say that I know what a tanker coversion consist of ….”

I can; my company builds more aircraft, including tankers, than any other company on the Planet.

“… but I do know that what ever the tanks are full of, wether it be fuel or what not, can be discharged at any altitude at any time.”

Yes, that is correct. Is that some sort of evidence for a “chemtrail plot”?

”Fact: There are several commercials, shows and even cartoons on T.V. that have scenes were the sky can be seen with contrails in them.”

Why are you surprised by that? Aircraft contrails are more and more common nowadays, as more and more aircraft are in service and more and more of the old turboprops are replaced with jet commuters.

”Observation: I have seen too many to list but I like this one because you don't have to believe me, you can easily check it out for yourself, and when you see it's true you have to ask yourself why? Why would anyone want to fill a sky seen with anything other then a natural blue sky, unless maybe they want us to think that white lines across the sky are completly natural and normal. This way when we go outside and see white lines in the sky we don't even think twice about it. We won't ask any questions.”

Maybe it’s because skies with contrails in them, in the year 2004, are the norm nowadays, just like you now see roads full of cars rather than horses and buggies.

You have made a lot of comments and facts and observations; most of your “facts” are true; and many of your observations are valid. But I don’t see that you’ve shown any evidence that persistent contrails are anything but ... well, persistent contrails!


[edit on 27-9-2004 by Off_The_Street]

My apologies to everyone who bothered to read Off_The_Stree's awesome awesome post - but some points just always need restating. I think that the public at large should be taught about Occam's Razor before conspiracy theories - if there are two explanations to something, it's usually the simpler one that's right. For example: There are strange contrails in the atmoshphere.

some how your rational explanation just doesn't hold vapor or water to me.

i am currently working in oceania countries and have travelled to Singapore , all over asia and at present holed up in australia.

If this phenomena is merely jet plane related - you should see as much chem/contails in the very busy Changi airport/airspace in Singapore or ChepLapKok in HongKong or Beijing. The truth of the matter is: I have NEVER seen the kind of chemtrails that i see in Australia. And those in Tokyo and Osaka looks amazingly similar to those in Australia and AmeRICA. In short - no chemtrails in China, Singapore, Malaysia, indonesia (don't know about India - never been there) but consistently seeing chemtrails (like those potrayed in Carnicom) in Japan & Australia.

As far as i know they are not spotted in Russia...

My criteria on a contrail is this: the TRAIL of vapour disappears and dissipates and not linger for hours. Chemtrails lingers for hours to form pseudo-clouds. If you have been an outdoor person like me - you should be able to differentiate between these pseudoClouds and real clouds.

I don't know what chemtrails are used for or against..
If you deny chemtrails' existence you might also conclude that Gulf War illness/syndrome amongst veterans do not exist (since government doctors and scientists have all testify that there is no such thing) who knows. maybe all will be revealed in 100 years time.

Hey, I gotta stupid question. Can I stick my neck out? How many contrails would be made from an airplane having more than one engine? I myself have only ever seen one coming from any airplane I have seen.

Just in case you guys are forgetting about this litle tid bit.

[edit on 25-9-2004 by timberwulf]

I have seen the photographs on the internet of these patterned contrails, and they look like deliberate flight paths having multiple parallel passes, or criss cross at right-angles.

Normal commercial flight paths never do that for some fairly obvious reasons.

I have a private pilots license and have been interested in this for many years. While I have seen many natural contrails of single commercial high altitude jets here in Australia, I have never seen anything like what is reported to be going on in North America.

Now there will always be cranks, crackpots and idiots reporting things in the sky, there are also trained observers and experienced people reporting seeing these things. Not all those photographs can be fakes. I have no idea what is going on, but whatever it is, it is definitely not happening at all here in Australia.

Originally posted by Warpspeed
I have seen the photographs on the internet of these patterned contrails, and they look like deliberate flight paths having multiple parallel passes, or criss cross at right-angles.

Normal commercial flight paths never do that for some fairly obvious reasons.

If you have an air mass, a frontal system moving west at 20 mph, and you have a series of airline flights going north to south at 15 minute intervals, and each one lays down a persitent contrail, they will be 5 miles apart.

IceTMan says:

"My criteria on a contrail is this: the TRAIL of vapour disappears and dissipates and not linger for hours. Chemtrails lingers for hours to form pseudo-clouds. If you have been an outdoor person like me - you should be able to differentiate between these pseudoClouds and real clouds."

If that's the case, suppose you tell me what cirrus clouds are? All the definitions I've reas say that they're ice crystals, plain and simple. Some of them last for hours; some for minutes; and some for days.

If your "criteria" on contrails are correct, then persistent cirrus clouds, which have been reported for hundreds of years, are "pseudo-clouds" --which were laid down by some kind of jet aircraft in George Washington's time.

If, on the other hand (and I believe this), some cirrus clouds hang around because they are in the proper atmospheric environment (i.e., temperatures below -40 deg and saturated RH) then why do you say that contrails (which are just ice crystals anyway) have to have some sort of secret plot and/or anomalous chemical compounds in order to persist in the atmosphere? From a meteorological point of view, it just doesn't make any sense.

Timberwolf says:

Hey, I gotta stupid question. Can I stick my neck out? How many contrails would be made from an airplane having more than one engine? I myself have only ever seen one coming from any airplane I have seen.

That's not a stupid question at all, although it's hard to answer, because there are a lot of variables.

The basic answer is "no matter how many engines the airplane has, you will end up with only one persistent contrail."

This is because the airplane is travelling around 500 mi/hr and the fuselage, wings, and tail contribute to a very involved series of eddies and air currents; usually, the hot water vapor from one engine will mix with the hot water vapor from the adjacent engine(s). Of course, this mixing with the ambient air also causes cooling, which could aid in the formation of the single large contrail.

But my guess (and this is only a guess; I am not a meteorologist) is that, if the atmosphere is supersaturated (which means that the persistent contrail ice crystals can act as 'seed' crystals for contrail growth), then each individual contail will seed the adjacent atmosphere and the enlarged contrails will merge to form a single big one.

If the air is not supersaturated and the contrails do not merge, the chances are the air is not quite 100 percent saturated and the contrails would sublime to invisibility within ten or twenty seconds anyway.

I'm having a hard time with this chemtrail business.
A friend seems very convinced that "chemtrails", as some weird plot, definitely exists. He cites a book written by a doctor that gives some very compelling information towards the existence of chemtrails - including government patents for an aircraft delivery system - and also claims to have witnessed (visually through binoculars) a chemtrail being created near the rear stabilizer of a twin engine jet, claiming that three trails were coming from the plane. He called me this morning to have me witness the "spraying" that was going on.
I tend to believe this is a hoax: that is, the mass-spraying of our population routinely and in plain sight. I do not doubt that the military has systems to spray stuff out of airplanes. But for each and every commercial aircraft to spray down the populous with some unknown chemical seems way off base and hard to believe.
One thing that strikes me as curious is that, assuming that chemical-spraying our population is indeed true, why wouldn't it be done at night when it would be less noticable?

Originally posted by gdawson44
One thing that strikes me as curious is that, assuming that chemical-spraying our population is indeed true, why wouldn't it be done at night when it would be less noticable?

Because spraying the population isn't the objective; at least now it isn't. It seems apparent to me that these trails are being used to protect against the sun's UV rays. What strikes me as very odd is that most of the trails that I have witnessed were being formed before/during the time UV rays are most harmful, 10am-4pm. It's just a theory.

Originally posted by Warpspeed
Secondly, all those military bases with the guards, the wire fences, and high security mean most of us without a clearance are never going to see those aircraft on the ground anyway.

Except when people board them, ride in them, and disembark from them. The chemtrail planes are commercial passenger planes not secret black ops planes

The government says agent orange is harmless, Gulf War syndrome does not exist, and so on.

And yet there are people suffering from gulf war syndrom, and people who have been exposed to agent orange get sick. These diseases aren't backed up by anecdotal evidence, which is all that backs up chemtrails.

If you believe everything the government claims, you would either work for them, be a complete fool, or both.

Someone who thinks that passenger airplanes are spraying noxious chemicals or mind control agents thousands of feet in the air with not a single shred of evidence should probably be wary of calling anyone else a 'fool'.

In a few years when servicemen (and women) are dead before their time with poisoning from depleted uranium, there will be total denial about that as well. Wait and see.

When people die from dep Ur. poisoning its because its a heavy metal, not because of radiocativity, so there's no 'in a few years' here. Besides which, agent orange and dep Ur has been shown to exist, in fact, its existence is rather obvious. But chemtrails? There has been no documentation that chemtrails exist. And no one that seriously investigates them seems to think that all contrails are chemtrails. Yet they have no way to distinguish between the two objectively.

It's like fluoride in the water, you cannot see it, cannot taste it, so it is not there right ?

No. You can test the water for its existence. Has any test for the existence of chemtrails ever succeded?

Something is going on all right, there are just too many eyewitness reports, and photographs to back it up. If it was for the public good, it would not be secret.
Dear lord man, no one is denying the existance of cloudy streams running off of planes! Anyone who has looked into the 'chemtrail conspiracy' would realize this, apparently you haven't bothered to research the topic very well, or else you wouldn't even make such an absurd statement.

Off_The_Street: I'm sure you noticed I used your 6 points of arguement (while giving you credit) in my debate against Nehpra...I think they hold very well and, given the proper amount of support, are easily capable of debunking the chemtrail hoax...

I came to the conclusion as I debated (and regretfully admited mid-debate) that chemtrails, as a by-product of plane exhaust, do exist...but for the purpose of diseasing and killing our population?? Please! There is no consistency in supposed sypmtoms, no immediate effects professioanly reported and diagnosed after a given period of time since someone saw a chemtrail, and plenty of people who think they know what they're seeing but in reality havn't a clue...

Thank you for your inputs. Here are my comments.

“I'm having a hard time with this chemtrail business.”

Welcome to the club.

”…some very compelling information towards the existence of chemtrails - including government patents for an aircraft delivery system …”

There are patents for a lot of things, including the use of thermonuclear weapons to dig harbors and canals, that don’t see the light of day. And even if a patent for an aircraft delivery system was put into production, what was/is it used for? Insecticides as on the C-130?

“…and also claims to have witnessed (visually through binoculars) a chemtrail being created near the rear stabilizer of a twin engine jet, claiming that three trails were coming from the plane.”

Assuming that the aircraft in question was at typical persistent contrail altitude (i.e., 30,000 – 38,000 feet) it would be kind of hard to determine exactly what kind of aircraft you’re looking at (even with binoculars), especially from directly underneath. There are two large aircraft which have two engines under the wings and a third engine at the base of the vertical stabilizer where it can’t be seen from underneath: the McDonnell Douglas DC-10/MD-11; and the Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin) L1011 TriStar. Although the remaining Tristars are almost exclusively used as air freighter, they still fly, and my guess is that the “chem-trail” being created near the vertical stabilizer was the exhaust of the engine he could not see.

”I tend to believe this is a hoax: that is, the mass-spraying of our population routinely and in plain sight. I do not doubt that the military has systems to spray stuff out of airplanes. But for each and every commercial aircraft to spray down the populous with some unknown chemical seems way off base and hard to believe.”

Don’t look for an argument with me; I agree wholeheartedly. Obviously, the “chem-trail” spray isn’t used to block UV or anything like that, or it wouldn’t be done at night, nor would it be done in such a haphazard manner. It’s also not usable to “inoculate” the populace with some sort of bio-juju, since the “fallout” from these “chemtrails” wouldn’t reach the ground for at least a day, and by then it’d be anywhere between 20 and 200 miles from the spot where it was first “sprayed”.

Furthermore, all the satellite views of aircraft contrails over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans means that either there’s nothing to the “inoculation” assertion, or else the Secret Plot Guys have reason to “inoculate” the fish, too.

”One thing that strikes me as curious is that, assuming that chemical-spraying our population is indeed true, why wouldn't it be done at night when it would be less noticeable?”

What can I say? When you sit down and actually go through some of the assertions, they simply don’t add up to anything coherent.

[edit on 4-10-2004 by Off_The_Street]

As a follower of the chem/contrail discussion, I wanted to add something about a front page Wall Street Journal article that I saw a few weeks ago regarding commercial airliners being modified with spraying apparatuses in order to have them on hand to help fight brushfires in the southwest.

On the front page was a color photo of a commercial airliner dumping a thick trail of chemicals. I was super busy at the time, noticed it, and thought, hmm, this will be interestingly received on ATS.

Now I cannot find anything regarding the subject, nor any links to an online version of the article. Did anyone else read similar news reports? It was obviously a Dow Jones sanctioned news story, as it was front page WSJ.

It was an interesting front page sight for the conspiracy researcher, plus it did prove that commercial airliners are being adapted for spraying missions to help "fight brush fires." - but I fumbled the info, and the story died.

Help? Anybody know anything about this? Perhaps it could be relevant to this discussion.