Friday, May 12, 2017

Listening to the sky



Look at airport time tables. Commercial air traffic does not begin until after 6 AM. Air space in LA is very quiet at 6 AM generally. Usually it is quiet all night except helicopters and high flying jet traffic. This is in East Hollywood observation. If there is jet air traffic at 4 AM it did not originate in Los Angeles, AND it is not a commercial flight -- unless it is a private jet (which is rare). In Los Angeles, it must be military air traffic, or military air freight.  A jet engine has a particular identifiable sound.

In December of 2002 I was constantly awakened in the middle of the night by jet air traffic. I lay there and listened to it rumble overhead at 3 AM or 4 AM. In time I figured out that this was not commercial air traffic, but must be military air traffic. As I lay there, night after night, I imagine huge caravans of steel planes flying military cargo to the mid East. Eventually I came to the conclusion that so much military cargo was being shipped to the Mid East that the USA was going to invade Iraq no matter what the diplomatic channels were trying to "work out".  Three months later that idea became a reality.

There are about 30,000,000 people living in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.  I find it curious that only one other person I know is even aware of this noise of air traffic in the middle of the night.

copyright (c) 2017
William Schaeffer

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