UFO Spotting

[Graeme1858]

New UFO Taskforce:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -taskforce

[Shabadoo]

So the gubbermint believes us now. And is no longer denying that we know that they know.

[pakarinen]

Ummm, I think they know that we know that they know...

Seriously, here's a sighting database that seems pretty rational compared to some. Your opinion may vary.

www.nuforc.org

[SirTalllPaul]

The link is dead of the database, I smell a coverup.

[Star Dad]

You need to copy and paste the web site into your browser - the link itself is broken - not the website. OK, so next time I see a UFO I'll submit a report. The last (and only) UFO I saw was 48 years ago. Never was able to figure out what it was.

[sdbodin]

I saw the Mattawa lights mentioned by agent Mulder in the famous TV series. But, alas, it was just the Army across the river shooting para-flares, nice sight though.

Steve

P.S. never seen anything unexplained in 50+ years outside at night.

[pakarinen]

You need to copy and paste the web site into your browser - the link itself is broken - not the website.

Well, poop. Maybe this is better:

http://www.nuforc.org/

[OzEclipse]

Just one light in the sky in 1989 I can't explain. Was doing solo fieldwork in western NSW outback. Camping out. Bright light, as bright as Venus perched about 15 deg altitude in the south. Stayed there for hours, stars moved it didn't. The best explanation I could come up with was a bright light on the ground over the horizon. Some sort of inversion layer was reflecting it making it appear to be up in the sky.

Didn't get abducted, no implants that I know of

[Star Dad]

In my case it was (as I recall) spring of 1973. I was out in the gardens at Miami University (Oxford, OH) just star gazing with a near full moon. There was a brilliant red dot hanging just below-left of the moon and it stayed there. I took a picture of it and when I got it developed the object was zigging and zagging whilst the moon was rock steady. So I cannot attribute it to camera shake. I know it wasn't Mars - as the object was far too red and not orangeish. And Mars was not even in the sky at the time. Just recall a UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object - unidentified being the key word.

[pakarinen]

Stumbled across this. I admit I'm impressed with this one, but being agnostic on the subject, I leave it to others to speculate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePzo56BdOhU

[helicon]

Hmm that one is interesting. Admittedly I am not a UFO fan or a fan of Ancient Aliens, but I found the story of the Navy pilots encountering something "unknown" and then having an article published in the New York Times about it worth a thought.

[sdbodin]

I find it strange in this day and age of auto-focus cameras, that all 'worthy' UFO pic are always blurry and fuzzy.

Show me the Beef,
Steve

[Ylem]

All I can say is my abduction didn't go too well.
The little guy escaped by morning.

[pakarinen]

All I can say is my abduction didn't go too well.
The little guy escaped by morning.

Slippery little buggers...

Flight Instructor and Student Pilot experiences a near miss with a UFO. Approximately 50 ft. from wing.

My student and I were performing a long cross country IFR flight. We departed our home airport, French Valley, to Santa Barbara airport.
The type of aircraft we were flying is a Piper Archer. Estimated time of event was 16:15 Pacific time.

Indicated altitude was approximately 6,100 ft MSL (Mean Sea Level). Indicated Airspeed was 105 KTS.

Approximate position was over Van Nuys Airport/ Burbank Airport, 2 – 5 miles West of VNY VOR, on the V186. Heading 280 degrees, North West bound.

Preceding the event, I remember ATC (Air Traffic Control) informing us of various aircraft around our present position. I was looking down at my iPad to look for any incoming traffic to maintain separation. As I looked at our position on the screen, there were multiple targets around our position that did not seem to be a factor as they were pretty far from our location.

The alarming and confusing matter was that the Garmin 430’s TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) was going off giving me a collision alert. It was depicting a target -100 ft from our position at our 12 o’clock, and it was moving fast towards us, opposite direction. I began to panic as this is very close.

My student pilot in the left seat yelled, “Oh My God”, and jerked the aircraft controls.

From my point of view, I was sitting in the right seat, as I looked outside to search for this fast aircraft 100 ft below us I saw a dark gray metallic figure dip low and pass right underneath our left wing. It looked like it made that it made a last-minute maneuver to avoid us. visually it seemed closer to being within 50 ft. I was able to quickly glance at the object as it was to my left.

This UFO looked closely like an oval, teardrop, or a tight dish-like shape, and very aerodynamic like. To me it looked like a mix between a fossilized trilobite with a smooth carapace, or flying manta-ray/turtle. The size of the object was approximately the size of a small jet like a Honda Jet or a very wide sports car. From my memory the top side of the object appeared to be made of metal as I saw metal plates that resembled closely to the top side of B2 bomber or a F-35 aircraft. I knew it was metal as I was able to see the sun reflecting it’s shine from the top of the object into my eyes. This event lasted less than 2 seconds and happened quickly. The object maneuvered incredibly fast.

After the event, my student was terrified as she was asking me what had almost collided with our plane. I gave her my description of what I saw and she confirmed and said it looked more like a flying saucer. She was able have a closer look as she was closer to the object and had a better view of it.

I look back down to my iPad to verify if it was still close by and the G430 and it was gone.

[...]

Did we feel the wake turbulence? No because we were above the UFO, and wing tip vortices sink towards the ground. It couldn’t have been a bird either or balloon either as the size was just far too large to match the profile of what we experience.

We did not report our experience to ATC as we were very shocked from the event. Looking back at my track logs of Foreflight, there appears to be a good 3 minutes of my flight data missing during the approximate time of the event.