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  • About Walter
    • 1980 Joining Up - Grafton Street >
      • Arrival and First Impressions
      • First Week
      • Training
      • Passing Out
    • Yaumati Cowboy >
      • Getting on the Streets
      • Tempo of the City
      • Jumpers, pill poppers and the indoor BBQ
      • Into a Minefield.
    • Why Tango in Paris, when you can Foxtrot in Kowloon? >
      • Baptism By Fire
      • Kai Tak with Mrs Thatcher.
      • Home; The Boy Returns
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    • Having a go: SDU
    • Starting a Chernobyl family
    • EOD - Don't touch anything
    • Semen Stains and the rules
  • 1987 to 1992 - Should I Stay or Go?
    • Blue Lights, Sirens & Grenades
    • Drugs, Broken Kids & A Plane Crash
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    • Riding the Iron Horse
  • Crime in Hong Kong
    • Falling Crime Rates - Why?
    • Triads
  • History of Hong Kong Policing
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    • Anatomy of the 50 cent Riot - 1966
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    • The African Korps and other tribes.
    • Getting About - Transport.
    • A Pub in every station
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Reflections on recent events, plus the occasional fact free rant unfiltered by rational argument. 

"If you want to read a blog to get a sense of what is going on in Hong Kong these days or a blog that would tell you wh at life was like living in colonial Hong Kong, this blog, WALTER'S BLOG, fits the bill."  Hong Kong Blog Review

4/5/2020 4 Comments

Something Out There? No!

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“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” Carl Sagan
Last week, the US Navy released three videos of encounters with 'unidentified flying objects'. The tin-foil hat brigade, with too much time on their hands during the Covid-19 lockdown, went into hyperdrive.

This saga has a backstory, much of which the main-stream media are getting wrong.  

Let me set the scene. The first video — titled FLIR — records an incident that took place on 14 November 2004 in the Pacific Ocean off Southern California. Two F/A-18 Hornets from the USS Nimitz reported chasing a UFO.

One of the Hornets captured infrared video with its targeting pod. Simultaneously, naval vessels and other military planes in the vicinity reported radar sightings. By some accounts, similar incidents occurred in the following days although no video evidence is available.


The second series of incidents involved the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Atlantic Ocean. These events took place from the summer of 2014 to March 2015 with five F/A-18 Hornet pilots reporting UFOs.

The Navy released two infrared videos of these encounters — GIMBLE and GO FAST. Like the Nimitz incident, radar contacts identified the presence of an object. One of the videos appears to show something travelling at very high speed at sea level. 


These videos first emerged to the public domain in December 2017 in a New York Times story featuring Luis Elizondo, a former US Defence staffer. The media alleges that Elizondo 'leaked' the videos.

This untrue statement gives the tale a disquieting edge, suggesting a cover-up. In truth, Elizondo attained proper consent to use the videos. Various branches of the military did not know this, leading to some confusion. Thus, with the Navy's 'official' release in April 2020, the story became a significant event. 


Of course, speculation is rife. Why did the Navy decide to make public the footage and confirms its existence? Are we being prepared for an alien encounter or is a Covid-19 distraction exercise underway? Meanwhile, the videos are shoe-horned into every crackpot conspiracy out there. This is often the way these days.

The truth is more prosaic. Could the release be anything to do with the thousands of 'freedom of information' requests they've received? These requests, placed with various agencies, have fed conjecture of a cover-up. Yet, as insiders note, the US military is a massive entity.

So, just because one section has certain evidence doesn't mean the whole institution knows. Accordingly, when replying to FOI requests with "we don't have such footage" the author was mistaken but honest.
 

The fact that the footage sat idle and unreported elsewhere suggests nothing more than lax procedures. 

I reckon the US Navy is fed up with all the fuss and having concluded the videos show nothing unusual, they released them.
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The Navy hasn't given out any of the radar or other sensor data that accompanies these incidents. That's no surprise. Such details are sensitive as it gives away information about military capabilities that are secret. 


As expected, a great deal of stuff is now buzzing about on the Internet. To some folks, these videos affirm the presence of aliens or beings from another dimension. To others, these sightings are trial runs of drones that will later spread Covid-19. 

Then you have pseudo-scientists asserting that the object in the FLIR clip is travelling at 40,000 miles an hour while pulling 60Gs. To them, this is direct evidence of advanced alien technology. 

Consider that an F/A-18 Hornet will break up at about 16G, while the pilot dies at approximately 9G. When asked to produce calculations to verify their findings, these 'experts' go silent. I can only surmise because it's nonsense.


The Navy has not stated what it believes is happening the videos. Radar data and other sensors likely provide a full explanation, but again for reasons of secrecy that's not something we are going to get. Thus, the lack of a full account is feeding the frenzy. 

Further, not knowing the explanation for the sightings does not mean we can jump to the conclusion its aliens. Such a leap would need a substantial amount of evidence.  

So here comes Mick West, who does share his calculations and draws conclusions from the available data. As Mick points out, there are simple explanations for these three events. He debunks the claims made about the FLIR video and in a series of YouTube clips covers the other encounters. 

The details, including the maths used to calculate speeds, are all given. The role of the sensor unit on the F/A-18 Hornet is critical, plus an understanding of parallax and trigonometry.


I'm sorry to say and rather glad that ET hasn't arrived nor has a portal opened to another dimension. With all this Covid-19 nonsense, we don't need another conspiracy firestorm. 

Not everyone will accept these mundane explanations. All that does is place the ball in their court — show us your evidence. 
​

By the way, if you want to fake your own ET video clip, below is an example using my iPhone and the sensor lights on the back of my watch. A bit of editing, some mood music and ten minutes later, bingo. ​
4 Comments
Chris Emmett
4/5/2020 09:37:21 pm

The truth is out there,

Reply
Gloria Bing
5/5/2020 07:04:46 am

That's the least convincing UFO footage I've ever seen.

Reply
Walter D
5/5/2020 08:21:30 am

That footage is so good that Spielberg has been on the phone. Plus, two good old boys from Arkansas claim that thing anally probed them.

Reply
Gloria Bing
7/5/2020 01:52:50 pm

True story:

About 18 months ago I was sitting on my balcony in Mid-Levels at about 8.45 pm, enjoying a medicinal stogie. Cloud cover was solid and (I guess) about 2-3,000 ft...above the top of ICC anyhow. As I looked out over the harbour towards Kowloon there suddenly appeared a loose V formation of slow-moving objects, glowing with a dull sodium-yellow light. They were coming straight towards me, on a course nearly directly South, in total silence.

Well, I am used to seeing aircraft approaching/leaving Chek Lap Kok; GFS helis belting along the harbour with a CASEVAC for Eastern Nethersole Hospital; the "Shagger's Express" arriving at Shun Tak Centre Heliport bearing lying husbands ("I'm just leaving the office now, dear") back from Macau; the Kadoorie brothers heading to the Peninsula rooftop for a quick bite, and all sorts of drones getting the money shot of the harbour (and the perv in Sai Ying Pun who flies his drone up and down the outside of residential buildings looking for another kind of money shot), but I had never seen anything like this before. These shimmered, and moved so slowly and silently they couldn't possibly have been aircraft, and moved in so stately a fashion they definitely were not drones. And there was something decidedly ethereal about them. I thought "Finally, I get to see a real, live UFO! And I'm going to be so close within the next 30 seconds that there will be absolutely no doubt." I was just about to get up and call Her Indoors out to see it when, just as it crossed above Robinson Road, the V formation took a ponderous left turn...and it hit me. Fucking ducks...

As a kid I had read about the "Lubbock Lights" and how the experts had infuriated the UFO crowd by stating they were just geese flying South for the winter, with the lights of the town reflecting off their oily breasts. The UFO buffs had stated that this was all debunker nonsense and nobody would be so easily taken in by such a ridiculous explanation. Well, I saw the phenomenon right here in crowded Hong Kong, and I can tell you that for about 2 minutes I was a True Believer. But now I know the debunkers were right...

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    Walter De Havilland was one of the last of the colonial coppers. He served 35 years in the Royal Hong Kong Police and Hong Kong Police Force. He's long retired. 

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