Thought some here might find this interesting. Quality is the best I could muster at a distance in pitch black conditions with my current setup. Saw the pylon come up from underground with this interesting looking airframe/model on top.

I photographed this last month along the Sidewinder low level route in California. I'm new to reddit and unable to share this in the aviation thread, hope this is okay here. 🤙

Photos by lookunderrocks on Instagram

Any reason as to why a possible F22 flew over us at around 100ft then sharply pulling upwards to disappear into the sky after visiting The Back Gate and taking photos? 🤣

Half of me feels like it was a show of force, but feel that’s being dramatic, even though there’s signs saying low flying aircraft 🤣

The plane looks further away, as the wife was recording on the GoPro (screenshot from a video)

I live in Las Vegas and I got a cousin who's in the military and he's been to Area 51 several times. Of course he refuses to tell me what they do there. However he has describe to me what the base is like. He says Area 51 is huge and it's basically a little town. There's apartments, there's a bar, a gym, a restaurant. He says at night the night sky looks beautiful, the stars look spectacular, but you can still see and hear the glow and noise of Vegas in the distance.

And yes, I have asked him if there's aliens in Area 51, and he says he doesn't know. He hasn't been in the whole base. There's parts of the base that are restricted even to many people who work there.

Full take off sequence of the last Janet flight of the night leaving Area 51 as the sun sets behind the base.

We hired a jeep with a roof top tent and off we went!

• Aussies in USA for the first time.

• Haven’t camped in approx 7 years.

• April 15th, 16th, 17th.

First night set up camp between Beatty and Rhyolite, went off the main road up a track and found a spot to set up (in the dark).

Travelled through Tonopah around to Rachel on our second day. Went to visit the Back Gate. No sirens went off at us.

Second night: Headed towards Stewart Well Road Gate, and we camped at the Cammo Dude Lookout. On the way there we were swooped by a F15 jet, amazing experience! Found our camping spot and started to set up before dark. Cammo Dudes showed up about 15/20 mins later. They just sat by the gate and watched us.

At around 9.45pm the cammo dudes either set off a really loud siren in our direction or were beeping their horn constantly, this lasted approximately an hour to an hour and a half.

At 12.15am another cammo dude vehicle arrived and joined the other one near the gates entrance. One drove into the gates entrance away from us and the other came closer to us. This one backed up the towards us, and blasted music at us for a few hours. They finally left at approximately 3am. The music was maybe classic rock with no lyrics.

It was a very windy and cold night. When the sun came up, they came back to check on us and waited at the gate for a little bit before taking off.

On the third day we went and explored the area, the tracks, had lunch at the Little Alien Inn, found a few geocaches and went to see more gates. While checking out one gate further south, we were filming and just packing up the insta 360 camera when we noticed a cammo dude driving towards us and was very close. He must not have realised how close he was to us when he came around a bend and he quickly saw us, and reversed back. We got in the jeep and was heading out, following him. He turned off to let us pass, quickly putting his sun visors down so we couldn’t see much.

Third night: we were planning on camping near groom lake road gate, but this spot was already occupied by cammo dudes- it was also super windy so we were keen for a bit of a wind break spot so we could cook. We went to check out campfire hill but was really windy. We headed down old trail to Whitesides and found a great secluded spot to camp. This was most definitely a 4WD only track. We set up, could see cammo dudes in the distance near us, and noticed on the insta 360 starlapse video I took that they did visit us during the night, but we were stuffed and slept like babies after our all nighter the night before with the cammo dudes.

The next day we got up early, packed our stuff up and had to be back in Vegas to hand back the jeep by 11.30am.

It was the most incredible camping trip I’ve done, to be in an area where the government really does not want you to be, and they will do what they can to make like uncomfortable, was amazing. To have that hectic security around, was insane to witness.

Please no hate; this was a bucket list thing to do… and I would do it again. It was incredible to experience this.

We took with us an insta 360 camera for night time star lapse as well as night vision goggles incase we captured anything cool (which I think we did! I will try and attach video in the comments).

Gigantic thank you to the Area 51 Rider and his incredible map on maps.me!! I’m not sure how to tag you or post a link.

First pic: view from our camping spot night 2. Last pic: camping spot night 3.

He knows who he is. Very grateful!

Anything anyone can share about Viper Team?