Hi All: As you may know, two Scud missiles were scheduled for launch from Vandenberg AFB during the coming weeks. With little advanced notice to the public or news media, the first Scud was launched this morning at 11:25 PST (19:25 UTC). My associates and I were lucky enough to see this event. Although my office is 115 statue miles (185 kilometers) southeast of the launch site, I decided to make an effort to look for the launch. The weather was very clear and I figured that the liquid-fueld Scud would briefly produce a vapor trail as it passed through the contrail zone (40,000 to 45,000 feet altitude). The launch window opened at 10:00 PST, but the launch was delayed until 11:25. Just before launch I went over to my coworker's cubicle which has a west-facing window. We were scanning the western horizon when somebody said "What's that?" Sure enough, there was a thin, white, squiggly contrail - typical of a missile launch. The contrail was curved and led away from the coast towards the west-southwest. Unlike an aircraft contrail, this one immediately began to dissipate and become more and more transparent. After three minutes or so, it was invisible. I either saw the Scud as it was actually producing the contrail or a few seconds after it left the contrail zone. It was rather interesting. An MP3 file of a news story about the Vandenberg AFB Scud launches is posted at http://home.earthlink.net/~kd6nrp/library.htm The file is named "scud.mp3". Regards, Brian W. Southern California ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Nov 15 2002 - 00:22:23 EST