other
cases.

Take high flying jets for example. To a person in an area where
there isn't much high altitude air traffic, a thin, blood red streak
in the sky at sunset, or shortly after, is a UFO. To anyone in an
area where there are a lot of high flying jets even our myopic
housewife, it's just another vapor trail. They're as common as the
sunset.

When the flashing red strobe lights, now used on practically all
aircraft, were still in the experimental stage back in 1951 they gave
us fits. Every time an airplane with one of these flashing lights
made a flight people within miles, including other pilots, called in
UFO reports. Now these strobe lights are common and no one even
bothers to look up.

The same held true, and still does, for the odd array of lights used
on tanker planes during aerial refueling operations.

Some phenomena are so rare and so little is known about them that
they are always UFO's. The most common is the disc following the
airplane.

I've never heard an explanation for this phenomenon but it exists
and I've seen it on three occasions. Maybe a dense blob of air tears
off the airplane, floats along behind, and reflects the sunlight.
Whatever it is, it gives the illusion of a saucer "chasing" an
airplane. Sometimes it's steady and sometimes it darts back and
forth. It only stays in view a few seconds and when it disappears it
fades and looks for all the world as if it's suddenly streaking away
into the distance.

Birds, bees, bugs, airplanes, planets, stars, balloons, and a host
of other common everyday objects become UFO's the instant they are
viewed under other than normal situations.

Then there is radar. This poor inanimate piece of electronic
equipment has taken a beating when UFO proof is being offered. "Radar
is not subject to the frailties of the human mind," is the outcry of
every saucer fan, "and radar has seen UFO's."

Radar is no better than the radar observer and the radar observer
has a mind. And where there's a mind there is the same old trouble.
If the presentation on the radarscope doesn't look like it has looked
for years a UFO is being tracked.

Radar is temperamental. The scope presentation of each radar has
certain peculiarities and an operator gets used to seeing these.
Occasionally, and for some unknown reason, these peculiarities
suddenly change. For months a temperature inversion may cause 50 or
75 targets to appear on the radarscope. The operator has learned