Effects of a Desert Mirage

Driving at highway speeds, if your passenger is making binocular sweeps, you can cover large areas quickly as objects loom up. The Dragoon I booster loomed up in Bryan's binoculars.
You can move the mirage refraction distance further away with every inch off the ground – stop and stand on your vehicle if you need to. From the booster, Bryan found the nose cone this way.
By our observations we think mirages affect radio propagation similar to light waves – maybe a form of the Tropospheric Ducting effect. Antenna height is needed to make beyond-line-of-sight surface contacts even on a flat lakebed during mirage conditions.
People with handheld radios lose contact beyond the mirage.

Driving at highway speeds, if your passenger is making binocular sweeps, you can cover large areas quickly as objects loom up. The Dragoon I booster loomed up in Bryan's binoculars.