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About Steve Douglass
Self-avowed "Stealth Chaser," Steve Douglass is considered by many an icon in the esoteric-yet-fascinating field of military monitoring.
By day, Douglass runs The Reporter's Edge, a professional radio monitoring service for local and national media. His expertise has helped break both national and international news stories for ABC News, CBS News, CNN, the Associated Press and others. He was one of the first to photograph the tragic re-entry of the Space Shuttle Columbia as it streaked to its doom over Texas and alerted the world's press when a Russian submarine sank in the Atlantic due to a fire in a missile compartment.
On 9-11, Douglass monitored the frantic aero-communications of that tragic day and kept the press informed of the FAA's and the military's desperate attempts to distinguish hijacked aircraft from those packed with innocent commuters.
As an author, Douglass' first book, The Comprehensive Guide to Military Monitoring, is considered by many the bible on the art of intercepting military communications.
He has also written many feature articles on emerging stealth technologies, aviation, astronomy, and cutting-edge technologies for Aircraft Illustrated (UK) Popular Science Magazine, and has been a behind the scenes contributor to Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine, the "must read" publication of the defense and aviation industries.
Douglass was also contributing writer for Monitoring Times and Popular Communications, magazines devoted to radio monitoring hobbyists.
Douglass' unsurpassed know-how in the field of military monitoring made him the subject of a Wired magazine article in addition to taped segments on NBC's Unsolved Mysteries, CBS News, and filmmaker Michael Moore's acclaimed TV Nation.
He has also appeared in seven "black project" related TV shows that have aired on the Discovery and Learning Channels.
In 1998 "Dreamland", author Philip Patton's exposé on Area 51 was released with an entire chapter devoted to Douglass. Douglass also helped Patton fact-check Dreamland.
Prior to his current incarnation, Douglass was a photographer for the Amarillo News-Globe newspapers. His innovative photographic illustrations were honored by The National Press Photographers Association's 1988 Pictures of the Year Competition, considered by many to be the "Oscars" of photojournalism.
He is also a free-lance professional photographer,web designer, videographer and graphic artist.
Douglass lives in Amarillo, Texas, with his wife, Teresa, a graphic artist who recently retired from the Amarillo Globe News.
In his spare time, Douglass is an avid tornado chaser and storm spotter volunteering for the Amarillo Emergency Service, a public safety organization tasked with warning the community.
Currently he doing a re-write on his novel, "The Interceptors Club and the Secret of the Black Manta" excerpts of will be posted on this site soon.
My business website is: http://www.webbfeatproductions.com
Blog - see all 1
The Interceptors Club and the Secret of the Black Manta Oct 4
I'm just doing the finishing edits on my book "The Interceptors Club and the Secret of the Black Manta.
I'll post some excerpts soon. Please e-mail me and tell me what you think.
Plot Synopsis:
Somewhere in the wilds of New Mexico, at a secret air base, they have built the ultimate stealth warplane. It is invisible on radar. It can fly rings around any fighter jet. It can fly above Mach 6 ... and it has just been stolen by a 15-year old boy.
That's the premise behind my novel, The Interceptors Club and the Secret of The Black Manta, a work of fiction, loosely based on my many years of actual experience "stealth chasing" for publications such as Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine, Popular Science and Aircraft Illustrated.
I am one of those "guys in lawn chairs" usually found sitting on a desert mountaintop, overlooking a military base, hoping to catch a glimpse of the latest stealth super-plane that doesn't officially exist.
My 135,000 word thriller is the exciting tale of a rag-tag group of technology-junkies (15 and 16-year old kids) who call themselves the Interceptors Club, lead by Stanley "Static" Dodson, a teenager too smart for his own good.
The Interceptors are military brats who live on an air force base and spend their free-time skulking around, collecting data on top-secret military programs - just because they can.
Using off-the-shelf surplus technology such as scanning radios, night vision cameras, computers and other eavesdropping devices, this eclectic group of precocious teens discover the existence of a new stealth aircraft that they call the Black Manta, the next generation in stealth technology,hypersonic, extremely agile and light-years beyond anything that has ever flown.
One day while on a "stealth mission" they are caught trespassing on the test range by Air Force Security.
Colonel Adam Pepper, head of the local military AFOSI (Air Force Office of Special Investigations) offers them a deal. Instead of throwing them in jail and notifying their parents he bullies the Interceptors into working for him as his "Tiger Team" putting their Interceptor skills to work, looking for other gaps in project security so (as Pepper puts it) "we can identify unforeseen security issues that could put this and future projects at risk."
But unbeknown to the Interceptors, Pepper has his own agenda. He is a double agent, working for his North Korean spy master "Chin" who is desperate to steal the secrets of stealth technology to give absolute dictator Kim Joon Il an unstoppable way of delivering a nuclear bomb to America.
With the information provided by the Interceptors Club, Chin steals the Black Manta, but unfortunately for him it is in pieces and he is forced to hide it nearby. He then kidnaps Air Force technicians to put the aircraft back together so he can fly it out of the country.
When the Interceptors Club discover what has happened, they are horrified. However, they don't feel they can go to the police (who wouldn't believe them) or anyone on base (who for all they know could be working for Pepper) so they are forced to call in "The Core" a group of adult Interceptors made up of investigative journalists, technology experts and computer hackers to help them locate the Black Manta and steal it back, before it is too late.
The Interceptors Club and the Secret of The Black Manta is a techno-thriller aimed at young readers but one I believe adults will find fascinating as well. It is Tom Clancy meets The Hardy Boys and provides insight into the real "Black World" of spies,covert military technology and political intrigue that exists behind today's headlines.
The novel is a fast-paced and cutting-edge thriller with many twists and turns, but it is also very funny, fresh and thought-provoking. It's tailor made for today's technology driven generation, but it's not far-fetched or dumbed down. Everything is based on years of actual research and will have the reader asking himself, did this really happen?
But as technology driven as it is, at the heart of the story is a coming-of-age tale of camaraderie, self discovery and hope in a post 9-11 world.
Interceptors
The Interceptors Club - Teaser
Space Station /STS 120 fly over
My Portfolio
Why We Photograph Nature
Example Module
My Music
Movies
Anything Pixar, The Departed, Transformers, CE3K, Contact, The Right Stuff, Sneakers, Signs, Zodiac, The War -Ken Burns, Saving Private Ryan.Elizabethtown, Almost Famous, Garden State, Mr. Brooks, Ocean's 13, Nightmare before Christmas, Polar Express, Across The Universe, Magnificent Desolation.
Music
Rascal Flatts, Spring Awakening, Martina McBride, Beatles, Heart, Led Zepplin, the Guess Who, Norah Jones, Feist, Michael Buble, The Eagles.
Television
Pushing Daisies, Lost, Burn Notice, Top Gear, Myth Busters, Robot Chicken, Chuck, Seinfeld, The Office, Storm Chasers.
Books
The CIA at War, Code Names, The 911 Report, The Elegant Universe, The Universe in a Nutshell, A Brief History of Time, The Book of Mormon, The Bible, The Hunt for Saddam, Code Names, Honest to Jesus and my own book "The Interceptors Club and the Secret of the Black Manta" which I am re-writing now.
Comments - see all 3
As an experiment I "intercepted" the International Space Station/STS 120 tonight and shot some cool video of it flying over at 210 miles altitude and cruising at 5 miles per second. Using data fromhttp://www.n2yo.com/ and setting my watch via WWV on 5.0 MHz (for accuracy) I picked out a nice area of sky with no obstructions, set up my camera and waited. The data showed the ISS would pass closest to my position at exactly 7:30 Pm. The sun had set and a full moon had risen giving plenty of light to reflect off of the ISS, however since there was still an orange glow in the sky, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to spot it against the sky. I started rolling video at 7:25 PM and searching the sky for any bright moving object.. At precisely 7:30 , i spotted it , to the southwest moving very fast from west to east. I zoomed up and tracked it for three minutes. A minute of the video I took is posted here. A t the time of interception the ISS/Shuttle was flying over El Paso, Texas some 300 miles away, and yet It was very easy to spot. I hope you enjoy this brief excerpt. A full video will be posted at a later date. -Steve Douglass
posted Oct 27
Note: You can now read the first five chapters of my book at:http://www.webbfeatproductions.com/The_Interceptors_Club.html
posted Oct 4
rossalexson@gmail.com says:
I ran across you looking for Stealth planes. I was wondering if you were the Steve from Amarillo on Coast to Coast AM, and, if so, what is your take on the Chemtrails thing?
posted Apr 7