My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

DrW wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 11:56 am
Anyone else catch the simulcast of "UFOs Declassified Live" …
Nope, but I’m going to watch it now. As an aside, how cool is it that we live in an era where I can instantly load up a show and watch it? by the way, Phenomenon was very compelling. It’s hard to come away from that and not believe the claims - if this is a psyop good Lord it’s well done.

eta: Hey Dr. W,

You've spent a lot of time in the air. Have you ever seen anything that made you question your sanity?

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:32 pm
DrW wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 11:56 am
Anyone else catch the simulcast of "UFOs Declassified Live" …
Nope, but I’m going to watch it now. As an aside, how cool is it that we live in an era where I can instantly load up a show and watch it? by the way, Phenomenon was very compelling. It’s hard to come away from that and not believe the claims - if this is a psyop good Lord it’s well done.

eta: Hey Dr. W,

You've spent a lot of time in the air. Have you ever seen anything that made you question your sanity?

- Doc
What I find so damn cool and so utterly unpredictable is having some of the finest, most informed people I know online, YOU people, hard heads, won't suck up woo woo, refutes stupidity, mocks that which deserved to be mocked, keeps us all thinking straighter than we would on our own, after having seen what I personally believe is enough of a compelling evidentiary based information set to keep looking, yes, you all are taking it seriously enough to share valuable insights and information and help with this also. Admit it, a couple years ago, I would have been slammed into the absolute LOONY bin for even mentioning UFO's seriously, right? NOW LOOK AT US ALL! Having a determined, serious, and absolutely spectacular discussion of the singular most WOO WOO subject ever, and the evidence has come in. This would be a Mormon's absolute DREAM if the Nephites/Lamanites/Jaredites had this level of seriously probable evidence!
Thank you ALL for giving even wider, deeper, and better context to this. It really is magnificent for me personally to be able to work with it and through it with you all. I am so grateful to be here and hang around a bit.

It truly does change the paradigm and makes the documentary called "UFOTV Presence: I Know What I Saw," by James Fox, the director of Phenomenon! I recommend this 2015 documentary strongly as well. The world has turned a corner man, now this has serious, deep, and abiding interest and relevance to our entire humanity, astonishing enough!!!
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DrW
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:32 pm
eta: Hey Dr. W,

You've spent a lot of time in the air. Have you ever seen anything that made you question your sanity?

- Doc
Hey Doc,

Yes. Twice.

The first was a high tension power line directly in front of us after taking off from an airstrip in the mountains of Northern California not far from Mt. Shasta. We were new to the airplane and this was our first time taking it off from an airport at an elevation of higher than about 400 feet. The plane lifted off fine in ground effect but, starting at 3,000 feet or so, didn't want to climb out at a rate that would get us over the wires. With my wife screaming, "Don't you dare!", we ended up flying underneath the power line before climb-out.

My wife swore that, as soon as we landed next time, she would never fly with me again. When she calmed down, I convinced her to take flying lessons instead. I questioned my sanity for waiting until the hottest part of the day (highest density altitude) to take off in a heavily loaded aircraft, from an unfamiliar high altitude airstrip, with a power line at one end and a tall trees at the other. So did my wife, so she learned to fly herself.
_______________

In the second incident it was the UFO I didn't see that made me question my sanity. A pilot friend and I were inbound over Lake Washington to Renton Airport near Seattle at night when the tower instructed us to switch to the frequency for Seattle Center (ATC). This was unusual because we were VFR and not under ATC control. We contacted ATC. ATC came back on the radio, gave us transponder code for identification, and asked us for our altitude. We responded and got a "Stand by" - all very mysterious.

ATC came back and said that they had reports of unidentified lights in the sky near our position at an unknown altitude. They asked our aircraft type and instructed us to make a 360 turn to see if we could get a visual. We were in a high wing aircraft and so would have a hard time seeing anything directly above us. We did as instructed, saw nothing, and expected to be handed back to Renton tower for clearance to land. No such luck.

Seattle Center came back and instructed us to make a climbing turn to a new altitude and have another look. It was dark. It was late, and we were both tired and in no mood to go chasing little green men. If you are in a high wing aircraft and are told that there might be traffic above that you cannot see, the last thing you want to do is climb. We complied - cautiously.

Still nothing. At this point, ATC advised us that earlier they had a unidentified radar return from above Mercer Island that had disappeared. Oh great. Now we were flying around in the dark, crossing paths with unidentified radar targets and seeing nothing. Things in the cockpit were getting a bit tense.

Seattle Center then vectored us over Mercer Island to look for the lights (at least no more climbing). Again nothing. Looking straight ahead out of the cockpit it was pitch black. If the target had gone dark ahead of us, we would have little chance of seeing it before the collision. One more pass. Still nothing. Our imaginations were starting to get the better of us. Finally, Seattle Center thanked us, wished us a good evening and handed us off to Renton tower, which had apparently been monitoring our communication with ATC (slow night) and gave us a much appreciated straight in approach.

My friend was a veteran pilot and knew one of the guys who worked in the tower. As we taxied to parking, he jumped out of plane with the prop still turning and headed for the tower. He would not be able to get access to the control room but could talk with them in private on a landline from inside the building. (It was well understood that one did not say the word "UFO" over open channel aircraft radios in those days.) He returned as I was loading the last of our gear from the trip into the car.

He explained that earlier in the evening there had been reports to the police of lights hovering above Lake Washington. Things escalated when Seattle Center contacted Renton tower (at the south end of Lake Washington) saying that earlier they seen an unidentified target in the area and asking Renton if they could see any lights in the sky in the direction of Mercer Island. The tower didn't see anything, but advised ATC they had an inbound aircraft that might be willing to take a look. That was us.

It turned out that the police and ATC had an idea of what was going on but ATC had failed to mention it to us that evening, leaving us to assume a different kind of UFO and question our sanity for flying around in the dark looking for it. (Air traffic controllers are trained to say as little as possible over the radio and only what is required to get the job done.)

Some kids on Mercer Island had taped up the top hole in plastic dry cleaning bags, taped them to tin foil plates, put small cans of Sterno on the plates, and lit them up to made hot air balloons that glowed in the dark. Tin foil plates served (unintentionally) as radar reflectors giving transient radar returns when close enough together and high enough above the ground. (Radars give target range and direction, but not altitude. They do not have enough angular resolution to distinguish between targets that are close together so these contraptions appeared now and then as a single target.)

The main concern was that the balloons would drop down into a wooded residential area before the Sterno burned out and start a fire. These contraptions were almost certainly below us the whole time. From our altitude, however, we could not distinguish them from all the other light sources on Mercer Island. Another UFO sighting, with radar contact no less, explained.
Last edited by DrW on Fri Jul 02, 2021 3:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous." (David Hume)
"Errors in science are learning opportunities and are corrected when better data become available." (DrW)
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

That was a fun read, Dr. W. Thanks for sharing.

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Fri Jul 02, 2021 3:07 pm
That was a fun read, Dr. W. Thanks for sharing.

- Doc
Yes indeed! As are all his posts that I have read.
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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I'm surprised to learn that ATC would just deputise a random civilian flight, interrupting its journey and sending it flying around in the dark to investigate a UFO. Isn't that like a traffic cop grabbing a random commuter on their way to work and sending them to go look for a reported stolen car?
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Physics Guy wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:54 am
I'm surprised to learn that ATC would just deputise a random civilian flight, interrupting its journey and sending it flying around in the dark to investigate a UFO. Isn't that like a traffic cop grabbing a random commuter on their way to work and sending them to go look for a reported stolen car?
As mentioned, we were surprised as well since we were VFR. However, our being "deputized" was not really random. Our aircraft was based at Renton, which was not a busy airport, and we were no doubt the only aircraft aloft in the area at that time of night. After more than a year's worth of radio conversations, the guys in the tower were familiar with us and the plane.

ATC had been in contact with Renton tower about the situation with the radar target over Mercer Island. Renton tower knew who we were and thought we would not mind having a look. The anticipated disruption to our flight (a 360 degree turn) would have been less than a request from the tower for a go-around due to a runway incursion for example.

It was late at night so ATC would not have been busy with commercial traffic. There was a fairly long wait after the "Stand by". ATC may well have been surprised that we actually contacted them. Nonetheless, ATC was the entity that could track our position relative to the earlier radar targets, so I guess they decided to give it a try. The other factor to consider is that this took place in 1972. The aviation environment in the Puget Sound area was less formal back then.
"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous." (David Hume)
"Errors in science are learning opportunities and are corrected when better data become available." (DrW)
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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To be clear, I wasn't doubting your story at all, just surprised to learn that that's how it was. Really not many people fly planes, so it's a different world for us earthbound folks. Thanks for the glimpse.
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Physics Guy wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 5:22 pm
To be clear, I wasn't doubting your story at all, just surprised to learn that that's how it was. Really not many people fly planes, so it's a different world for us earthbound folks. Thanks for the glimpse.
To give an idea of how much things have changed in the aviation community since the 1970s, an instrument flight instructor in those days could call ahead to McChord AFB at Fort Lewis on a slow day and arrange for an instrument student to come down and shoot an approach using their precision approach radar (PAR) zero / zero landing system.

It was quite an experience to go under a hood so you could not see out of the airplane, get picked up by the PAR operator several miles out and then have the PAR operator talk you down to less than 100 feet or so above the runway (no touch and go). The instructor would lift the hood and there you were - a perfect approach.

McChord accommodated instructor requests for these now and then because it was good practice for their operators, who could talk planes down in zero / zero visibility conditions the point where they needed to flare. I can't even imagine the howling laughter on the other end of the line nowadays if someone were to call up an Air Force base and request a PAR approach in a civilian aircraft.

In fact, there will soon be no more heavy, labor intensive PAR equipment in the military or anywhere else. PAR has been pretty much replaced by highly mobile differential GPS precision approach and landing system known as JPALS (Joint Precision Approach and Landing System) to be used by all services and NATO forces as well.

You just set this thing up in the field around the landing strip or heliport. It surveys the local terrain and then, using cockpit receivers, guides the pilot safely around mountains or other obstacles, through all kinds of weather or in total darkness, to the touchdown point on the runway. In larger planes, it will even flare for the pilot if she so chooses.

But the main thing that has changed in aviation since in the last 40 years is cost. My first used plane cost $5,000 in 1971. I upgraded the avionics to a IFR trainer for another grand or so. That very same airplane today would easily cost $30K. They have ceased production of that plane now. The newest available would be older than mine when I bought it and in the $50K range. A remanufactured model with a more powerful engine and good avionics will cost more than $150K.

I was able to barter labor, car repair, and flight time my airplane in the aviation community for most of my flight instruction, up to and including commercial pilot, instrument, and multi-engine ratings. Today those same ratings would cost, again, about $50K.

And that's why a much smaller percentage of the population are flying around in their own airplanes today compared to 40 years ago.
"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous." (David Hume)
"Errors in science are learning opportunities and are corrected when better data become available." (DrW)
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Should we be worried that hamburgers are shaped like flying saucers and are also America's favorite food item?
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