17:55
[Erik] Preston, welcome back to the ranch. Always willing to come back. We have fun out here. Yeah. Well, we're gonna do some things differently this time. [Travis] While the drillers get ready to break ground on a new borehole, we decided to switch our attention back to the bubble. We suspect the bubble and the mesa are connected, but we still don't know how or why. We want to learn more about the triangle, which is the center of the bubble and a region where a lot of our instruments tend to fail when they're trying to record data.
Just like our GPR issues inside the mesa. So, we invited Preston Ward and his team from Sky Elements back for a new experiment. [Brian] Okay, taking off. [Travis] A few weeks ago, we flew drone swarms back and forth through the bubble's western boundary. That helped us figure out that its width is about 120 feet. So tonight, we're hoping they can help us learn more about the dead center of the bubble. [Allen] Come on. [Travis] Last year, we launched a rocket straight up above the triangle that released a huge cloud of powder at about 1,000 feet high.
-[Thomas] Oh, there's the powder. -[Allen] Yep. [Travis] As it descended, the cloud froze around 800 feet for a few seconds, almost like there was an invisible structure. Y'all got some weird mojo out here. So, one of the things we'll be concentrating on tonight will be to confirm if there's something there, and hopefully, map out the size of it. Preston, talk to us about the different configurations we plan to fly tonight. So, we have 100 drones. Is that right? So, it's gonna be 100 drones, and it's gonna stay in a horizontal plane. And it's gonna work its way, zigzagging up all the way to 1,000 feet.
So, that way, we can get good data all the way through as it goes up and down. [Travis] Okay. [Preston] I want to do a test flight before we do that first full drone swarm. So, we're setting our four corners here. [Travis] Before Preston and his team launch all 100 drones, they want to do a smaller test flight of the four drones that will fly at the corners of the full swarm. This is expensive equipment, so they want to make sure these drones behave like normal once they're in the air. I mean, this is Skinwalker Ranch after all, and we've seen drones fall out of the sky here.
Ten seconds to launch. Five, four, three, two, one. Drones are rolling. -They're staying in formation pretty good. -Yeah. They're gonna hit the mesa. Yeah, they're gonna-- Bring 'em home, bring 'em home. They're gonna hit the mesa. [Matt] Bring 'em home. They're going to hit the mesa. [Travis] These drones were on a pre-programmed flight, which was supposed to go directly over the triangle. So what the heck could be causing the drones to veer
so far off course and almost fly directly into the mesa? [Matt] Oh. We got two of 'em coming back. Two. Three. One. [Travis] Look, those two are stuck. There it goes, there it goes. Then they got it. [Preston] During the test run, the placement of the swarm on the map in flight showed it to be exactly where it should be: right over the triangle. But we all saw, with our own eyes, it wasn't over the triangle.
It really doesn't make a lot of sense because once they enter their pre-programmed flight path, they should be rock solid. I imagine you guys are gonna make a few adjustments. Yeah, so I'm gonna rotate the whole show a bit I imagine you guys are gonna make a few adjustments. to the-the right here, um, to kind of line it up better with the triangle. We missed kind of far that way. Um, so we're gonna rotate the whole thing. [Thomas] Okay, sounds good. [Travis] Let's light this candle, y'all.
Five, four, three, two, one. Drones are rolling. [Cameron] Drones are up. [Preston] One failed to lift. Okay, let's go. Launching. [Travis] Brian Woodward of Sky Elements was following close behind the swarm with his first-person view drone, or FPV. That way, we could get a close-up view of any unusual behavior from these drones during their programmed flight.
It actually looks like one of the drones did not take off. [Thomas] Yeah, one of them did not take off. [Travis] We can see the hole. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I totally lost it. Shoot, shoot. I lost it. [Thomas] The FPV drone just hit the ground -south of the science tent. -Oh, my god. [Erik] Guys, did we have a drone hit the ground just now? [Thomas] Yes. The FPV drone just hit the ground. [Travis] First, one of the 100 drones failed to launch with the swarm. But then, the FPV drone fell right out of the sky for no apparent reason.
Did it crash into something invisible right above the triangle or did something chase it down and knock it out of the sky? And in either case, what the heck could it be? It made us nervous about what might happen to the rest of our drone swarm as it flew up to 1,000 feet. The drone swarm came over the center of the triangle. [Thomas] The drones look like they're spinning in circles. [Kaleb] Yeah, look, there they go. Yeah, they look wonky. [Travis] Thomas, what elevation are the drones at?
[Thomas] They're 50 feet from hitting that thousand-foot mark. But the drones are now spinning in place. Something's definitely wrong. [Travis] The drones started moving in circles as soon as they passed into that 800 to 1,000-foot zone. That's right where we saw that cloud of powder get stuck last year. So, could the same thing be affecting our drone swarm? And if so, what was it? They're coming down. Drones are descending. The formation is south of the triangle now. They're descending for landing. [Ellis] We're at 600 feet right now.
[Thomas] 600 feet and descending. Yeah, they seem to have stabilized. [Travis] As soon as the swarm descended to a lower altitude, the drones started flying like normal again. It's like whatever was affecting them was concentrated right in that 800 to 1,000 foot zone. [Preston] Eight seconds. Landing mode engaged. Ninety-nine back down. [Travis] Drones are on the ground. Hey, Thomas, let's go over here and check these. [Thomas] Yeah. So, they should be right back on the mats, right?
[Preston] They should directly centered on the mats. [Thomas] Oh, look at this. That one's almost completely off. It looks like they all shifted the same way. [Preston] Well, and if you look at that one, they were all pointed this direction, so that one's almost pointed -90 degrees the wrong way. -Yeah. So, typically, when they twist like that, it indicates, um, a magnetic anomaly. Hey, guys, uh, we're over here looking at the drones and how closely they came down on these mats. Uh, we've got some pretty misaligned drones, indicating a lot of magnetic interference.
What in the world could act like a giant magnetic field between 800 and 1,000 feet in the air? Is it something generated inside the bubble? And could it be related to all the UAPs, weird signals and equipment malfunctions we keep encountering, including what happened during Jan's most recent GPR test? [Thomas] Hi, Preston. Hey, Matt. Thanks for jumping on with us. Thanks for having us, guys. So, I know you've got a lot of data that was collected on each and every one of the drones in the swarm. So, what do you got to show us?
[Matt] Yeah, absolutely. So, I'll share my screen up here. [Erik] Yeah, so, we see all those positions with numbers on them, and I think -[Matt] Yeah. -you call those slots? [Matt] That's right. So that's the slot position that the drone will sit in. First drone we're gonna look at is drone number seven here. [Erik] Got it. [Matt] This graph with the blue line above represents the altitude of the swarm as it runs through its program. And right here is our 1,000-foot peak.
The interesting things we were seeing here uh, was in the magnetic spectrum. [Travis] Right. We can't wait to see all the details on that. [Matt] This orange line in the top graph represents the magnetometer data coming from the drone. And the quadrant below represents the drone itself. So, when we get to this point here, you'll notice that there's a huge magnetic field that caused the drone to swirl around because its heading wasn't accurate. Where did you start running into these magnetic issues? At what altitude?
Prevalent around 750 feet above ground level. Yeah, got it. So, that magnetic interference is continuing for almost 250 feet? -[Matt] Correct. -Wow. [Travis] So, this magnetic region could be even bigger than we thought? Well, I don't know what the rule or legal altitude limit is, but, uh, the bubble is roughly 2,000 feet high at the center of the triangle. So, boy, it'd be awesome if we could get drones up to where you're touching the top of the bubble at 2,000 feet, to see if these electromagnetic anomalies could be detected up there, too.
[Erik] Well, guys, uh, appreciate your collaboration on this, as-as always, and I look forward to the next time we, uh, get a chance to, uh, put our heads together and get some drones in the air. Absolutely. We can't wait to be back and see what else we can find. -Thank you so much. -All right. -See you guys. -[Travis] See you guys.
