Haha... Nice one Barry, I almost bought that patch in Rachel nevada.
Hi Fr. Bill,
With the airport security guy lurking nearby, I passed on finding out who I might spend the day with if I took a photo of the Janet 737-200.
What I found interesting was that while I was looking around the Internet gathering information on the various Las Vegas based helicopter tours to the Grand Canyon (back in 2003), I ran across what was at that time a well known photo which had graced the cover of Time Magazine (I think) and was associated with one of the main articles of that edition, showing a white jet taking off from KLAS, with the black pyramid of the Luxor Hotel as its background. It was a nice study in contrasts, and whatever the article was about it had nothing to do with the airport or the Luxor hotel.
What made the photo interesting at the time was the fact that it was one of the Janet Airlines 737-200's, and as odd as it seems now, the whole Area 51 "Secret" thing was still somewhat of a big deal back then, and apparently no one at the magazine had even known what the photo represented, they just liked the composition.
At any rate, after my champagne brunch in the canyon, my plan was to spend the night at the border town of Pahrump, and then head off to Death Valley for the rest of the week, and just figure out what to do when I got there.
The Janet Airlines sighting got me thinking about Area 51 as a possible destination, but knowing I couldn't actually get close, I put it on the back burner.
Then while I was out hiking around in Death Valley, I kept seeing fighter jets on maneuvers above the canyon, and one day a B-2 was trolling up and down the valley behind a highly instrumented 737-200 ( NT-43A radar test bed).
That was it, I broke out my road map (an old school method of finding routes before GPS) and decided I would leave before dawn and drive all of the way around the Nellis Test range from Beatty Nevada, up to Tonopah, across to Rachel, back down through Las Vegas, and end up back at Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley.
I have to say that while I had an awesome day which included breakfast at the famous Little Ale-E-Inn in Rachel, I didn't see any jets or UFO's (that I knew of). This was February, and although it was bright and sunny and around 70 degrees, there was snow on the mountains. It was so remote out there that to take photos, I would just stop in the middle of the highway, and I could see 15 miles in either direction. In fact, I think the entire time I was on Hwy 375 (aka The Extraterrestrial highway) I might have seen half a dozen vehicles.
That night back in my room I was going through my photos making space on my flash card, and I had a really nice sunrise shot with beautiful purple, red, and orange clouds in the background and I noticed that what looked like a bird had flown into the shot. That morning it was was around 10 degrees out, and my camera battery went dead after some earlier shots, so for this series I waited till the sky was spectacular, found a spot to pull over, and got out with the plan to methodically take as many shots as I could before the battery went dead. At ant rate, I almost deleted the photo but decided I could photoshop the bird out and save the shot when I got home.
Wouldn't you know it, but once I zoomed in on the "bird" on my computer where I could see it clearly, I found that I had apparently captured what appears to be a disc-like aircraft that did not seem to have a vertical stabilizer. (Yeah, now I have to dig it out of my archives)
Seeing the Janet 737-200 at KLAS led to an interesting day of adventure!
Cheers
Gman
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