I can hire this one out if need be

That’d do, Dr Strangelove!

Will the moderators please consider adding it to the icons list? I for one would use it lots. 🙂 🙂

Faith? I guess I started that emotive mood by saying True-disbeliever. My apologies.

I agree there are some who treat space visitors as a matter of emotional faith (after all they are surely here to save us from ourselves? And that is religious.)

There are true believers on both sides of the discussion (materialistic TV scientists started it off by declaring that UFOs don’t exist and so on. A non-scientific approach IMHO).

I have seen UFOs and they are not the natural or human things that deserve to be in our skies. So I am a true believer in that I know they are not illusion or mis-identification.

But I don’t know WHAT they are. They ‘might’ be advanced non-human aerial vehicles. They might be something completely different. The main belief in the USA is that they are nuts-and-bolts spaceships or timeships. Unfortunately the USA is the main producer of books and TV documentaries. But here in Europe the main viewpoint is not the N&B theory but a more openminded view that they are real and exist but we don’t know as yet what they are or what they represent.

My personal view, based on my first hand experiences and reports I have read, is that they can become real to the mark-one eyeball and to radar but at other times they seem to have a less physical set of properties that to me suggest they are something outside our current scientific understanding – maybe in intrusion of intellegence from another reality or dimension.

It is too easy to replace Jesus for Space-brothers and a belief system cult results in either view if we are not careful. But these phenomena are pretty real and significant IMHO and anyone reading pilot-related UFO encounter reports will be impressed by the genuine nature of these ‘things’.

Sorry to seem to preach! I honestly think reading pilot encounters would impress you guyz. 😉

Speaking of runway 23L in a few posts above, I have many nice memories of planes flying over my house when I lived under the flightpath for that runway, although by then it was only runway 23. Lots of wind and rain, even B747’s got blown about in those winds. Concorde always looked nice and stable though!

Yes! I once watched 23 landings from a grassy knowl at the end of 23. Wow, what a lot of scary landings. Only an IL-62 chose to land cross-wind on 28Left. But neither of the two runways were really into wind and 35kts makes for demanding landings on such a short runway as 23 was.

More rare were the opposite end landings on 05. When 05 was in use it seemed to be within high pressure areas and the northern arrivals would make an interesting long circuit around the western edge of the airport (over my home) and finally visually onto 05 (maybe it didn’t have an ILS on that end?).

Veering slightly off-topic, Propstrike, but taking the cue from your post – I was out walking the dog over near Panshanger airfield last week when I noticed what I took to be a Red Kite soaring aloft in the wind over the strip, and doing a good job of travelling backwards. I wasn’t aware that there were any in the London area, thanks for confirming my sighting.(Now an expert twitcher is going to post and say it wasn’t a Red Kite, but a Bengalese fish-eating Parrot or something).

That’s correct, 91Regal. The Red Kite community has made it east toward the M25 I think (and as far west as Westbury) but not as far as Panshanger because the bird respects its ATZ. What you saw was undoubtedly a Bengalese fish-eating Parrot. Or a Yellow-breasted Nit Picker on a rare visit from Siberia. Neither of these birds respects aviaton law or nits.:cool:

And this is only the aeroplanes that crashed. Don’t forget the increasing near-misses in the LTMA between airliners inbound and outbound Heathrow.

Not to mention the near misses with objects that were never identified (UFO or the military didn’t want to own up to losing a missile).

I recall an Alitalia MD80 inbound to Biggin VOR reporting a very near miss with a cylindrical object which was never traced. The pilots made a big thing about that and I don’t blame them because it was either a lost cruise missile or something even more scary.

And there was the outbound Concorde that almost hit a Twin Otter out of Luton over Woodley NDB at 6000 feet. Remember that? That might have been our first Concorde accident but for a few feet.

So it’s all lightning then? :confused:

UFO = lightning

End-of-the-World = lightning

Gods = lightning

All the threads on GD = lightning :diablo:

We are going to need a Lightning icon then! LOL

I hope nobody with an overdeveloped imagination is listening-in on all those pilots talking about ‘silver balls’…

…there’ll be a rash of UFO sightings! :rolleyes:

Ah! A true-disbeliever. Oh well, someone has to do it I guess. 😉

Has it occurred to you that rather than ‘some people’ having an ‘over-developed’ imagination, some other people might an under-developed imagination? I have found that when people actually look into the subject from a pilot-related pov, they take a more sincere approach to the subject. :diablo:

Same thought to the ghosts-as-ball-lighting thought. No correlation whatsoever as far as I can see. I have never read a (so-called) ghost encounter that suggested it was static electricity in a plasma form. For one thing, ball lightning usually explodes at some point in the encounter. I have never read of a ‘ghost’ exploding! 😀

The trouble with we human beings (and I know because I am allegedly one) is that we find it so easy to make pronouncements and judgements without knowing anything about the subject.

I personally find the facts get in the way of a good prejudice or dumb idea so who needs them? Right? Isn’t that how the creationists think when they deny the theory of evolution (not proved as yet but a very gooood theory even if it might be wrong).

CHEMTRAILS (heard of this one?)
Coming to a conclusion without the facts or information is what makes the conspiracy peeps on another forum say airliners are spraying humanity with a mind control chemical. I told them it was not possible for such a thing to be done without thousands of peeps knowing about it but they say I am wrong. Chemtrails are real and jetliners the world over are spraying us daily. I tell them that contrails only happen when the upper tropopause is a moist airmass and that contrails are merely jet fuel condensed into cirrus ice crystal clouds but they are so sure that the conspiracy to dumb and control humanity is happening and the facts are not going to spoil a good conspiracy theory. You see they need something to beleve in and anyone with a camera can capture the conspiracy about our heads. It makes them feel significant in a world which deals insignificancy to all of us.

Hmmmm…. Sad 🙁