Question for somebody who knows everything:

Yesterday my lovely wife and I were in her car and we commented on some (six or seven) bright contrails criss-crossing a very clear blue sky.

Now, that's not unusual at all around here. One thing we have plenty of is airplanes, both civilian and military, and many are at high altitude so contrails are common.

Later in the afternoon she was making her daily post office run and her cell phone made its annoying noise so she pulled onto a parking lot to answer it.

While she was talking she glanced up and saw this attached sight.

How come? Contrails ain't round. Are they?

Not even the cockiest show-off aerobatic pilot would be doing air show maneuvers (complete with smoke) right there ..... on Friday in the middle of the day? ..... and just a few minutes from DFW airport?

Jerry, you know about stuff like this! What gives?

Would they?

Jim

It looks like a practice run for some skywriting. Some years ago Joe Kittinger did a lot of skywriting here in Orlando and one of his signatures was a smilie face.

UFOs!!! :-o I knew it was true! :-)~

...or it could be a planes circling in a holding pattern???

I also seen the same thing Friday. Cool HUH

nascar driver with a new pilot license???

New tornado warning?

Gandoff the Grey, making a big smoke ring from tobacco pipe?

Sorry for the late reply(maybe ansewer)

Atc probably gave someone a enroute delay to pick up some spacing along an airway, create a crossing distance factor somewhere enroute, or in these days some spacing for Air Force 1--

For the past 20 years or so, in trail spacing along the air routes have been tightly controlled( especially on the overseas routes where radar wasn't available)
A turn like that would take 2 minutes(standard rate turn) and would increase distance by 15 - 20 miles---A turn like that would have been given to someone that either was going faster than his clearance, or someone in front of him that wasn't going fast enough to maintain spacing.

This was pretty common also back in the Reagan years when he was at war with the atc guys, and the next sector wouldn't accept the traffic---one day I flew up and down the Grand Canyon for 40 minutes because Cleveland center shut off traffic----So I first went one way and then got permission to turn the other way so the passengers on the other site could see the canyon out the other side windows---was fun for me too----------

" Not knowing anything about it has never stopped me from being an expert". - Fred Flintstone