Mysteries, Chemtrails, Aerosols :: Mysterious NZ

[John Anderson]

The use of the term 'spraying' in conjunction with a sighting of Persistent Contrails may not be strictly correct. Substances designed to create trails (for whatever purpose) can be mixed with jet fuel and combusted without affecting performance or damaging the engine (other than a slight polishing effect on rotor blades). This is not theory, the patents exist and there are many documented additives mixed with the basic Kerosene that comprises aviation fuel, and perhaps some undocumented ones. What is definitely theory and so far unproven, is that it is actually being done in this way, over our skies and that perhaps normal Jet A fuel now contains particular additives to create this effect - but that's a subject for another post. It also could be argued that the term spraying is a right and proper one for the release of hydrophilic chemicals through a jet engine and we would not dispute that. But how do you know whether the contrail is a 'normal' trail or an induced trail? You don't, other than the existence of associated anomalies. However, it may be possible, though not with the naked eye, to actually see that an aircraft is spraying through say, nozzles along the wing.

The difference will be seen in the nature of the trails themselves. Here's a 'normal' looking trail:



And this one taken by us on the 24th February 2005 from the vantage point of Coopers Beach:



Both of these above pics show that the trail forms at about the tail of the plane, This is normal and is explained by the diagram below from DLR, Germany's Aerospace Research Centre and Space Agency:



ms = A microsecond, One millionth of a second.
K = Kelvin = Unit of temperature equal in size to the Celsius degree, but with the zero set by the absolute zero of temperature (-273.15°C). Water freezes at 273 K, room temperature is about 293 K, and water boils at 373 K, at sea level. human body temperature is 310 K.

The distance behind an engine where a Contrail will become visible basically depends on 1/ the speed of the plane and 2/ the ambient (surrounding) temperature. Certain chemical actions and mixing must take place, together with cooling to a temperature where the snap freezing of the mixture occurs, before the Contrail becomes visible. The cooler the ambient temperature, the closer the Contrail to the engine. Aircraft that actually spray however, have an entirely different appearance. This can be easily seen in the photo below, the difference is self-explanatory:



Photograph courtesy of Holmestead .com: http://www.holmestead.ca/index-ct.html

To our knowledge, no such photographs have been taken in New Zealand, they are however, relatively common particularly over the USA and Canada. The KC-135 military tanker aircraft (based on the Boeing 707) above was photographed on the 19th October 2004 15 km Northeast of Bancroft, Ontario, altitude accurately estimated at 19,660 feet (5,992 metres). Its trail is a mixture of Contrail and Spraytrail.

So keep those binoculars handy (photographs would be good), we would really like to hear of any sightings of anything resembling the Ontario pic...