Brendan Jesus
Welcome back! Fret not, I have no intention to follow up on last week’s soapbox-stood verbal lashing. Two very interesting things happened in Ufology over the past week, and I only really care to talk about one of them. (The one is that Steven Greenstreet interviewed a senior Pentagon official who stated they faked UFO evidence to cover up top secret technology.) Sadly (but also understandably), Jeremy McGowan has decided to withdraw from the UFO/UAP research community for some time. “I can no longer, in good conscience, be part of a community where fact and fantasy have traded places and silence makes me complicit,” he tweeted. Jeremy was one of my favorite voices in the field of Ufology. His no-nonsense approach and direct attitude towards grifters was a necessary breath of fresh air.
But I don’t blame him. I, too, would trade UFO research to ride the open road on a motorcycle. Enjoy the ride, and maybe a glass of whiskey on us here at 25YL!
Now, it’s time to take a trip to one of our favorite ranches in Utah to see how many rockets we can fire until we find out The Secret…of Skinwalker Ranch.
Driller Thriller
Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, Kaleb Bench, and Thomas Winterton are joined by the Mark Construction team at the Mesa Drill Site. This is Mark Construction’s first time back on the ranch since the beacon issue that derailed the drilling operation in Season 6 Episode 2, “The Drone Zone”. Alex Swanson tells the team of researchers that he stopped at the Skinwalker Ranch property line and tested the beacon before crossing the threshold. It worked.
Now, it’s time to put their money where their mouth is. The drill crew sets up the beacon and drill head, and the operation begins. Thomas reports the beginning of a smooth operation to Travis, Erik, and Kaleb, who are huddled around Travis’s spectrum analyzer. At 150 feet into Borehole 1, Thomas updates the team. We’re approaching the dreaded 200-foot mark; the operation can only go one of two ways at this point.
Two hundred feet come and go, but not before Travis receives a 1.2 GHz signal on the spectrum analyzer. Travis reminds us that the 1.2 GHz signal only appeared after Erik first broadcasted the beacon in Season 6 Episode 1, “Bubble Trouble”. There’s also an out-loud reassurance from Travis that the team is not broadcasting any signals, especially one at 1.2 GHz.
The drilling continues as Travis notices two more signals on the spectrum analyzer. Both of these new signals are broadcasting at 1.6 GHz. These two signals are confirmed to be coming from the Mesa Drill Site, we learn, as they are being picked up by a spectrum analyzer antenna that’s pointed at the Mesa. Travis wonders if this signal could be coming from the 400-foot-long object inside the Mesa.
Thomas heads to the top of the Mesa to prepare for the drill head to punch out. Prepare for the funniest bit to come out of this show. We’re about to talk about reaming—a lot.
“I’ve seen the drill head come out of the Mesa the very first time. I can’t wait to see it again. That will be our first indication that we have a clear pathway from which to start the reaming operation.” – Erik Bard (Come on, who edited that clip?! It’s one of the raunchiest audio clips to come out of the show!)
When the drill breaks through the top of the Mesa, Thomas drops another raunchy as hell line.
“I’m excited to start reaming.” – Thomas Winterton
Jokes aside, the reaming head is attached to the drill, and the operation to widen Borehole 1 has gone into Phase 2. The operation goes off without a hitch…or so it seems. First, Travis gets a mysterious 29 MHz signal. This is the same signal the drill head’s beacon was emitting. The only issue is that the drill head beacon was removed and shut off. Secondly, Alex Swanson tells Travis and the crew that they’re only 40 feet in. Travis asks for clarification, and Alex says they should be reaming through five to 10 feet a minute. It seems they’ve hit a very rough patch of something.
Alex says they have a 10-inch reamer bit, which will reduce the overall diameter of the hole by two inches. Erik is fine with this because the equipment they will be putting into Borehole 1 will be approximately an inch in diameter. The Mark Construction group goes ahead with switching the reaming bit.
Hotboxing The Bubble
Later in the day, Travis, Kaleb, Erik, Thomas, Jim Royston (OmniTeq CEO), Sam Deriso (OmniTeq Chief Engineer), and Technologist Pete Kelsey meet up with David Mason (Technologist and inventor) at The Triangle. Travis goes over the plan: build two large fires and hope the heat, fire, and smoke fill The Bubble. Putting particulates in the sky might help the team get a clearer image of the physical scope of The Bubble.
David has brought with him differential FLIR technology that isn’t commercially available. This allows the team to detect every microchange in temperature. The Avalon Fire Department will be on scene as well to monitor the fire and smoke. And to make sure he didn’t feel left out, Pete Kelsey will be running his terrestrial laser scanner and a SLAM Scanner.
Night falls as the team fills both dumpsters with heaps of wood. David sets up his multi-camera FLIR. And Jim Royston gets ready to put his drone in the air. Erik Bard is at the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center (again, he’s not at the ARC for some reason. And Sam Deriso is also there, so why isn’t he in the ARC??).
Everyone’s respective setup is completed, and the fire is ready to be lit. But as Thomas prepares to set the skies ablaze, Travis receives a 1.2 GHz signal. Erik Bard sees the signal from the Command Center.
Thomas sets the first dumpster on fire. Glorious licks of flame shoot up from between the scattered logs. He then lights the second one. David immediately raises the alarm with what he sees on his FLIR. We should only be seeing pure heat on the FLIR, but cold vortices appear in between the smoke. Jim, Sam, and Pete look at the image and say it makes no sense. These cold vortices are also happening right over The Triangle.
“I’ve never observed this, nor would I expect to be able to observe this. This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.” – David Mason.
Travis decides to fire a rocket between the dumpsters. You know, just to see what happens to the cold vortices…or something. The rocket goes up, but doesn’t come down. Everyone looks toward the sky and notices the rocket is simply floating above The Triangle. The entire team seems transfixed by this incident. But should they be? Tons of “wow” and “holy crap” s are thrown around as if this were something groundbreaking. A simple examination of this incident should make us realize the rocket is “floating” because the chute has an upward force from the intense heat and smoke from the TWO dumpster fires directly below it.
But I digress.
David gets another cold spot vortex on his FLIR. At the same time, Travis gets a 1.6 GHz signal on his spectrum analyzer. Erik confirms the same signal on his spectrum analyzer.
The next part of the experiment is ready to go. Travis tells Thomas to douse the fires. As the intense smoke continues to float upwards, Travis sets off a second rocket. Suddenly, everyone freaks out at an unseen blueish/white orb that speeds by the rocket. The rocket successfully fires, but the chute doesn’t deploy. They radio Erik, who did not see the orb going past the rocket.
Data Reveal
The next day, Travis, Erik, Thomas, Kaleb, Jim, and Pete sit down at the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center to look over the data. Erik has an interesting video clip to share that occurred when the team was setting up for the night’s festivities. He pulls up the video, which is shot in color vision night video. We see a UAP directly above the Mesa. It seems to be too low for a satellite and too slow to be a moving plane.
Erik then pulls up David’s FLIR video that depicts the cold vortex. What’s interesting is the location of the vortex. It resides at the same height as The Blob. (In case you forgot, in Season 4 Episode 3 “The Blob”, we learn a blob-like anomaly was found over The Triangle.)
Pete pulls up a 3D rendering of the information found from his SLAM Scanner. Interestingly, the LIDAR captures the smoke from the fires. But there are very sharp cut-offs on each side of the smoke, which implies it’s being held in by something. It is also precisely being held within the boundaries of The Triangle. That’s not all! Erik zooms in on the LIDAR image and notices a solid structure within the smoke, and it’s in the same exact location as David’s cold vortex.
Pete has a second scan to show. This one was at the same time as the blueish/white orb at the time of the second rocket launch. It’s from the terrestrial laser scanner and facing toward the East Field. A bright white floating dot is in the dead center of the image. Could this be the blueish/white orb they saw? They seem to think so.
Rename this episode to The Pete Show because Pete Kelsey has a third, and final, image to show us. It’s a clear upward view of The Bubble. But it’s not just that, you can see clear, ring-like markings all the way up to the top of The Bubble.
Final Thoughts
My thoughts are all over the place for this episode. The entirety of the reaming bit had me cackling like a witch. It was unintentionally the funniest thing to ever come out of this show. My only concern here is if widening Borehole 1 STILL hasn’t been completed by Season 6 Episode 3, then we might just be in for another season of TOO MUCH DRILLING.
Floating rocket ridiculousness aside, the fire/Bubble experiment seemed very half assed to me. Or, the data wasn’t as strong as it should have been—one or the other. Maybe I had my hopes up too much. I was expecting them to hotbox The Bubble, and that we would see smoke filling The Bubble from top to bottom. Instead, we had two decent bonfires, and some rockets were fired off. I’m not sure if the final data seemed justified at the end of the episode.
But hey, what do I know? All I know is we may one day uncover information about The Secret…of Skinwalker Ranch. But that day is not today.
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You can watch The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch: Smoke it Out (S6E3) and previous episodes on The History Channel.
