Steve Douglass
52 years old
Amarillo, TX
Male
About
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
Likes(7)
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.
Steve Douglass, Oct 27, 2007:
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
Steve Douglass, Oct 4, 2007:
Note: You can now read the first five chapters of my book at:http://www.webbfeatproductions.com/The_Interceptors_Club.html