Look, the AA factory is flashing, a NOE raider must be inbound:
And here he is about 1.5 minutes later, just before dropping on the factory:
Wait, 8.4k and no darbar? Yes, no darbar until he got in visual range. Obviously he had approach the factory NOE and then popped up, but it actually takes almost 4.5 minutes(!) to do that, all of this time without any darbar.
If you are an avid buff hunter strat defender, you will probably have run into this thing before, upping for suspected noe buffs then seeing them high above you (I ran into 15K 'NOE' B-24s before). Very often a few players spotted a darbar, while most others never did.
How does this happen? I don't know for sure, but it it's not always linked to offmap flying (see bug section about that).
What can you do about it? After accidentally getting this PM some time ago after a similar incident (.r feature has it's drawbacks
)
I found that relogging between sorties can really work. More than once I saw a darbar in region that had been totally empty before, while other players being in the arena for a long time still don't see any.
So to keep the playing field somewhat level, I recommend occasional relogging (unless, of course, you are not interested in strat defense anyway). I'm not sure if it works in all similar cases like this one (may be very different things causing it), but it definitely has unveiled the occasional 'invisible' bomber above NOE level.
Happy hunting, everybody