Interesting Times at Mojave 3-15-17

a reply to: nelloh62

He started to, but he got distracted.

Navy aircraft bingo'd there for a maintenance issue?

Chase aircraft seem plausible as well, but why not just hop them out of Edwards if they were needed?

I was thinking perhaps some sort of scaled composites pod that needed to be attached and flown? I cant scale up enough to make out were they growlers?

a reply to: FredT

The second one appears to be a single seat aircraft. If it was a pod, they could just have trucked it to China Lake. They probably could have tossed it in the back of a pickup for that matter.

The test article may not have been at Edwards, or they couldn't get hangar or ramp space there.

originally posted by: Sammamishman
OK, here's your conspiracy theory for ya:

The Navy is testing a new aircraft.
1. That air craft is of Northrop design as evidenced by what looks like initially as largely spaced canted tail planes of a single aircraft, much like the YF-23 had.

2. The upcoming air show at China Lake forced this new aircraft to leave where it is usually tested to Mojave. Home of Northrop's Scaled Composites facility where they had hanger space to house the craft until it could return to China Lake.

3. The Navy is using two seater F-18's as chase for the new aircraft since it is a Navy project and would use F-18's as opposed to the usual F-16 seen at Edwards.

4. The Navy has been really dragging it's feet on the whole MQ-25 project. This new aircraft is why. The MQ-25 would take away funding as well as needed carrier deck space from this aircraft that might have a stealth bomber and/or tanker mission.

5. They only flew after dark. They had the craft in a hanger but had to bring it out before total darkness to prep for flight. The Moon rises a little before 11pm last night.

In an interesting coincidence, the Blue Angels arrived at China Lake yesterday.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Played around with one photo in lightroom

a reply to: grey580

Good work. Aviation forum teamwork

Arent those F-22's?

a reply to: PokeyJoe

No. The one on the right is an F-18. The one on the left has some oddities that are being looked at.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: PokeyJoe

No. The one on the right is an F-18. The one on the left has some oddities that are being looked at.

You know better than I do, the tail section of the one on the left definitely looks like a Raptor to me. I see F-18 in the right now...

a reply to: PokeyJoe

That's the one we're looking at. There's something odd about it. It could just be the angle, but it could he whatever was about to fly.

and one more

Found F-16s parked in front in at some point.

a reply to: nepatitan

There's definitely some fun stuff that takes place there. They have a test pilot school, and three Flight Services F-100s out there.

Scaled Composites, Orbital, and Virgin Galactic are all there too.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Wish we could have got out there when we were in Vegas last year. Only got to see weapons school graduation at Nellis. Was awesome though.

a reply to: nepatitan

Mojave is definitely worth keeping an eye on. They tend to fly under the radar with people that hunt these things, because it's mostly known as a storage yard.

a reply to: grey580

Can anyone tell if anything is in the open hanger to the right ?
Oh, and good work grey for cleaning up the images.

a reply to: hutch622

I'll stick with my DSLR. I'm getting pretty good with it, considering many of my pictures are while we're bouncing down the road at 60 mph.

a reply to: Zaphod58

You should get one of these guys.

www.ebay.com...

Car suction mount.

I find that, for the best shots, using the timer, in addition to a tripod, so that there's no camera vibration, gives great results.

a reply to: grey580

I've got my eye on a pretty heavy tripod and remote for my next lens. It comes with a teleconverter that I'll probably only rarely use. But when I'm on a stakeout it'll come in handy.

best I could do... the one of the left is what's under investigation?