Le cas "Frederick Valentich", 21 octobre 1978

Wikipedia a écrit:His stated intention was to fly to King Island in Bass Strait via Cape Otway, to pick up passengers, and return to Moorabbin. However, he had told his family, girlfriend and acquaintances that he intended to pick up crayfish. During the accident investigations it was learned there were no passengers waiting to be picked up at King Island, he had not ordered crayfish and could not have done so because crayfish were not available anyway.

[So clearly Valentich was being evasive about something].

Sebastien a écrit:Ben justement, que voulait-il faire? Ca pourrait fournir des indices. Est-ce que la pêche à la langouste était prohibée à cette période-ci, est-ce pour ça que l'autre source parle d'un banal vol de courtoisie?

Gilles F. a écrit:Le billet montre que contrairement à ce qui a été développé ici ou là, des débris de l'avion auraient bien été retrouvés.

Valentich indeed said he was "orbiting," and so was the object! I'm with you: he was already in his "descending spiral," and apparently didn't realize it. There's no mention of him looking at his instruments, he's fixated on his "UFO!" A pilot accustomed to flying only using Visual Flight Rules, upon encountering a situation where there are no visual clues (in clouds, or in darkness over water) almost invariably goes into a death spin, with the average time to the crash being 178 seconds!!! According to Wikipedia, Valentich had a Class Four Instrument Rating. This does not sound terribly impressive. Also he had never flown over water alone at night before. From the time that Valentich first reported the UFO - when he presumably became disoriented - until his last transmission was 6 minutes and 14 seconds (374 seconds), well within the range of pilot crash times measured using a flight simulator.

I used the on-line planetarium program at http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Yoursky to try to reconstruct the sky at the time. (I would have used my own RTGUI, but it doesn't go back before 1980!) Assuming that I did enter all of the correct parameters (for the exact location I used that of an 'oil slick' later reported), the sun was almost 11 degrees below the horizon when he took off. So the sky was already getting dark. Venus was shining at magnitude -4 (really, really bright) in the southwest, elevation 22 degrees. Around the time he got in trouble, the sky was almost completely dark, and Venus had sunk to 11.5 deg elevation in the southwest. Apparently he thought Venus was "above" him, so he obviously had no idea of where "up" or "down" was. So at that point, he has "178 seconds to live."

We also read in Wikipedia "He had twice applied to enlist in the Royal Australian Air Force but was rejected because of inadequate educational qualifications. He was a member of the Air Training Corps, determined to have a career in aviation. His student pilot licence was issued 24 February 1977 and his private pilot licence the following September. Valentich was studying part-time to become a commercial pilot but had a poor achievement record, having twice failed all five commercial licence examination subjects, and as recent as the previous month had failed three more commercial licence subjects. He had been involved in flying incidents, straying into a controlled zone in Sydney (for which he received a warning) and twice deliberately flying into cloud (for which prosecution was being considered)." I wouldn't want to ride in an aircraft with a pilot like him!

Gilles F. a écrit:Je me demandais si les verrières de son CESSNA 182 Skylane étaient teintées vert, ou non, et si cela pouvait expliquer, ou non, pourquoi il parle d'une "lumière verte" (pour l'hypothèse Venus) :
Etc.

Ben justement, que voulait-il faire?

A strange thought occurred to me as I was reading some of the Valentich documents (page 4 of the version at http://www.scribd.com/doc/99038229/, paragraph labeled 22). "The pilot's father believed that a UFO had taken his son and would re[turn] him later." (There is 'white out' covering the end of the word beginning with "re"; I have added what seems to be the correct ending.) THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT TRAVIS WALTON'S BROTHER TOLD INVESTIGATORS WHILE TRAVIS WAS 'MISSING'! Now we know that none of the reasons that Valentich gave for making this trip are correct (to pick up friends, or crayfish). Is it possible that the father and son jointly planned a Travis Walton-style incident where Fredrick would land somewhere and 'go missing' for a while, to return with a tale of abduction by aliens? This idea just occurred to me yesterday. I'm not saying this is definitely the reason Valentich made that trip, but in the absence of any other plausible justification for this risky over-water in darkness flight, the possibility that they planned a hoax ought to be considered.

lhommealacigarette a écrit:vous avez surement lu :

Its angular diameter was equivalent to that of a tennis ball held at arm’s length (approximately a 6.8° arc),

First, no wreckage of Valentich’s airplane has been found.

It is obvious that his aircraft was the focus of attention of this strange object.