Flashing from a possible satellite tumbling on its arc.

Took my dog out for his last night potty run about 10:45 pm tonight.  I always look up at the stars at night as it was something Dad and I used to do when I was growing up.  He was an engineer, designing early communication satellites, and I know quite a few of his designs are above us, circling the Earth.  Dad taught me how to identify a planet as opposed to a star, and how to track the satellites when they go overhead.
Tonight, I caught a glimpse of a flash of white light out of the corner of my eye traveling from the west to the east/southeast sky above the star Altair (used my Sky Guide app to figure its location), then dismissed it as I thought it was a light of an airplane high overhead.  We are under the flight lines for our local airport and the nearby military base.  I looked to the south and then back over where I saw the light and saw a smaller glimmer of it.  Continued watching that area of the sky and it flashed again and again, somewhat in a predictive sequence about 2-3 seconds in between each flash and the duration of the flash was a fraction of a second which made it very hard to predict where it was going.  When it flashed again, this time it was like a streamer flying in the wind with a 1-2 second duration and then it disappeared, only to quickly flash again a few more times before the light dimmed out of sight.
I do not believe it is a UFO craft.  I believe I saw a satellite which may have been knocked so it's spinning while in orbit and caught the sun reflecting off its solar panels (the flashing light) instead of a steady glow which moves in an arc across the night sky.  The flashing light was still traveling as if it were following a satellite arc, that's how I could guess where to look when I realized it wasn't an airplane flying overhead.   
Just wondered if anyone else had seen the same thing tonight.  Pretty interesting!