Patrick D. McCaslin Interview, 25 February 2001
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| INT: | In station keep, they'd be a mile. [The intervals are one-half nm, with brightened rings at .75, 1.75, 3.75 nm.] | |
| INT: | Okay. So it went 1 mile, 2 miles, 3 miles— | |
| PM: | Yeah. | |
| INT: | —all the way out to whatever you were set for? | |
| PM: | Yeah, I think station keep was 5 [nautical] miles, no more than 10. Very close to the aircraft. | |
| INT: | And Sector scan was? | |
| PM: | Yeah, sector scan was—the radar antenna would instead of going around and around, would go back and forth in a narrow sweep, concentrating the energy in just that area. | |
| INT: | Okay. Let's pop back to where were you— | |
| PM: | Okay, we're on the approach, but we're climbing out to do this approach, and had established that, you know, we were asked to keep our eyes open for anything strange. No one had said anything like UFO or anything like that. It was just, "Keep your eyes open for anything." And at that point, since I was flight-following the approach anyway, I asked Chuck to put it in station keep mode, 'cause I figured if there is anything in the area, my best chance to see it would be in station keep—more energy, closer. And he did that for me. As we climbed out, I monitored the direction we were heading and monitored the altitude, and I watched the scope. At some point during our climb out, and I don't remember what the altitude was, but—and I don't even remember what altitude the approach began at, but that could be established by looking at the approach plate for that time. At some point on the way out to the VOR, or to the nav aid, I saw a weak—off to our right, maybe 3 miles out, I saw a weak return, one scan. The next scan, there was a very strong return at that location, about 3 miles off our right wing, which meant to me that something had either climbed into the radar energy, which was why it would be weak as it entered it, and then was about co-altitude in the next sweep, or it descended into the—could've descended into it. Don't know which. But it was clear that something was out there, and it was large. It was as big or bigger than a KC-135. My impression was it was a larger return than the KC-135 gave me. So I called the pilots and said, "There's traffic off our right wing at 3:00." Looks like co-altitude and nobody saw anything. So I kept watching this thing. The pilot's basically said, "Keep us advised," and I think I may have called them a time or two and said, "It's still out there." And then— |
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