NUFORC Sighting 105570

Occurred: 2013-12-28 17:10 Local
Reported: 2013-12-28 16:14 Pacific
Duration: 10 minutes
No of observers: 4

Location: Rocky Mount, VA, USA

Shape: Changing

Black hovering object seen in daylight hours.

I was out cutting firewood in my in-laws back yard about a 20-30 minutes before dark and I looked up hill and between the house and some tall trees through the opening I saw what appeared to be a very large helicopter off in the distance. It appeared so large that I thought it might be a chinook (I think that is the one with dual rotors.) I looked at it for 5 to 10 seconds and then when I didn’t hear it, I asked my wife “what is that contraption flying towards us?” It did not make a sound which had me interested in it. It seemed to be traveling at normal helicopter speed what ever that is (80-120mph??) Like a medevac helicopter when you see them approach and fly over.

It appeared to get larger and then went out of view behind the house. I walked up the hill some to get a better view of it as it came back into my line of site my wife was standing right next to me further up the hill. When it appeared again,(maybe 10-20 seconds after going out of view) it was actually out beyond the house not precisely over it. By this time it was clearly black in color with the shape undefined. The top appeared to be narrower than the bottom and it seemed to me to be oscillating very slightly. (this very well could be just my brain trying to make sense of what I was seeing based on past experience only small electric drones move in that way with little or no sound)After this seemingly normal speed (for a large helicopter) approach it came to what appeared to be a slow deceleration until it came to a complete stop roughly 500 feet from where I was standing and maybe 300-400 feet in the air. It stayed there for maybe a minute or two with very little mov! ement. It seemed as if it saw us standing in the yard looking at it and came to a slow stop. After the one or two minutes it began moving again it moved up in a very different direction than it was going before it came to a stop. It moved at a very steep angle almost directly away from us. It took 3-5 minutes to finally go out of view. I stood and watched it the whole entire time to see if it would eventually dart away or make some other kind of unusual maneuver but it did not. It seemed to go directly away in a straight line from me up into the sky until passing out of view. (surpass my ability to see it in the distance) From the time it came over the house to stopping it appeared to be much smaller than when we first saw it. Even though it was a lot closer it appeared to be smaller. So for the time it took to disappear I would guess it was traveling at 10-20 mph as it went away.

Based on feeling after it appeared over the house I estimate its size to be about 3ft by 3ft, black in color, with an indiscernible shape.

Posted 2014-01-10