civilian jet trailing a small object near Wichita ?

[flyer101flyer]

Hi all. On January 5 in the afternoon near Cheney Lake, Kansas I observed a civilian aircraft flying northbound. Two jet (turbine) engines were mounted on the aft fuselage, T-tail configuration, size appeared consistent with a regional airliner or very large business jet. Winglets were canted out at a relatively shallow angle above horizontal, maybe 45 degrees or so.

A small object was following the aircraft at a distance of about 1/2 to 1 fuselage-length behind the tail. For a split second I thought it was a bird but on further observation, through binoculars, it was obvious that some small object was trailing the aircraft at the end of some sort of wire, hose, or line, which appeared to be connected to the aircraft somewhere in the vicinity of the top rear corner of the vertical stab.

What was this object and what was its purpose? What was the aircraft? Was it possibly some sort of flight test out of Bombardier/ Learjet? I didn't see any test probe on the nose of the aircraft but don't recall whether my viewing angle would have permitted such a thing to be seen. I was basically looking at the aircraft from the rear.

The object was not very steady (as an actual "drogue" ought to have been)-- rather, it erratically orbited around the edge of an imaginary cone with an apex angle of 30 degrees or so, with the apex of the cone being at the point where the line or cord attached to the aircraft. So I don't suppose the device was some some sort of camera.

It appeared that the aircraft's flaps may have been partially down for part of the time that I had the aircraft in view, though I couldn't be sure about that.

Thanks for any info