Trent,

As earlier posters have said, probably a Turbo Porter. Used to see
them parked at the Fairchild offices (Fairchild was tied in with
Pilatus at the time) northwest of D.C. along the freeway (I think it
was I-270). The building had two parking lots (neither very big).
One was for cars. The other, without lines, or any connecting
pavement to the street, was where they'd land a Porter. Kind of odd
to see one parked there as one drove by. Very capable short field
airplane. If you watch the otherwise silly movie, "Air America", you
see a Turbo Porter operating from a short, steep mountain strip. No
special effects, they did it well.

Night vision goggles will allow the operation you described, without
much effort on the part of the pilot. I'd hope he or she was touching
down in the same spot each time, that's what one expects from a
reasonably well trained pilot in STOL equipment. Called a friend of
mine who flew helos in the Army some years ago and asked about night
ops. She said that she was trained on night vision goggle operation
starting early on in primary flight training and it continued
throughout her service. She expressed surprise that the commercial
helicopter operators that do the life flight stuff for hospitals don't
use them.

All the best,
Rick

"Trent Moorehead" wrote in message ...
I have crossposted this question because I realized that those in the
military area would definitely have some knowledge about this.

Last night, which was a super quiet, calm and moonless night, I was out
standing on the ramp when I heard the rather sharp bark of tires as a plane
landed at the far end of the runway. There was no sound to preface this.
Immediately afterward I heard the sound of prop blade reversal which was
fairly loud. Then I noticed that this plane probably only rolled about 100
feet after touchdown. From my perspective, it looked like this plane hardly
rolled at all after touchdown.

The plane, which was a turboprop by the sound of it and fairly large, took
off with about another 100 feet of ground roll. I could hardly believe what
I could hardly see (it was very dark). The airport beacon did splash some
light on it for a split second as it rotated, but I couldn't discern much.

It stayed in the pattern, but only got to about 100 feet off the ground and
was moooving fast. It came in for another landing, banking extremely to line
up for final. I now realized that there was no landing lights (just nav
lights, no strobes), but more importantly, no runway lights. "Holy crap, how
is the pilot doing this?", I thought.

I remember when arriving at the airport, seeing a black SUV parked at the
landing end of the runway, just visible in the waning light. Could he be
helping with this operation?

Another pilot joined me and said that this was Special Ops from a local base
and that the plane was a Pilatus. Not the new fancy ones, but a special STOL
equipped aircraft.

Does anyone have information about this? This was the most eerie display of
flying I've ever seen....well, barely.

Thanks,

-Trent
PP-ASEL