SUBJECT: TAMPA BAY SKEPTICS REPORT FILE: UFO3147 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From the "Tampa Bay Skeptics Report" Vol. 6 No. 1 Summer 1993 Published by Tampa Bay Skeptics 1113 Normandy Trace Road Tampa, FL 33602 [1:377/33 Fidonet] Founder, Editor, Publisher: Gary P. Posner Chairman: Terry A. Smiljanich Vice Chair: Miles W. Hardy Other Exec. Council: James W. Lett, Vincent E. Parr Copyright 1993. May be quoted by press if appropriate credit is given to "Tampa Bay Skeptics Report." Membership or printed newsletter subscription $10/yr. (4 issues) "Boomerang" UFO reported by Hernando sheriff's deputy, others by Greg Simpson A handful of witnesses, including a Hernando County sheriff's deputy, reported seeing a large boomerang-shaped "UFO" cruising the skies over Hernando, Pasco and northern Pinellas counties during a several day period in mid-April. According to Wes Platt's articles in the April 20 and 21 editions of the St. Petersburg Times, deputy Ron Chancey was on patrol at 9:20 P.M. on April 16 when he noticed "blue lights" at a height of about 300 feet which seemed to be following his car southward toward Bayport. Stopping to shine his spotlight at the object, it now appeared as a vague, dark "boomerang-shaped" outline, hovering silently, with a wing-span of "200 or 300 feet." After a "few minutes," Chancey told Platt that he drove away toward a nearby park, at which time the object "cut to the west" toward the Gulf of Mexico. At least six persons at the park told Chancey that they had also witnessed the unusual object. Said Chancey, "Based on what I know now, I don't think it's from this planet. Nothing on Earth could hover and haul ass like that." After reading his first article, several additional witnesses reported their own UFO sightings to Platt. A couple in Tarpon Springs saw the same object on the night of the 16th for "a good five minutes" as it moved "slowly to the west." A woman in New Port Richey claimed that on the night of the 15th, during a rainstorm, "a bunch of real bright lights" silently approached her home, causing a street light to wink off until the UFO departed. Another New Port Richey resident claimed to have seen a hovering UFO during broad daylight on April 18. On May 9, WTSP-TV 10 carried a story by reporter Kelly Williams, who had interviewed another witness, Paul Marasco of Hudson, who had only recently come forward. After speaking with Williams, I called Marasco, who described the object as resembling a "wedge," pointed at the front end and flat at the rear, which he says glided silently over the treetops in Hudson at 8:30 P.M. on April 16th, an hour before the Bayport sightings. But unlike Chancey, Marasco, a UFO believer (who told me a bizarre story about a 1964 central Florida "abduction" case involving "an alien cloak and hieroglyphics," the Secret Service, the KGB and NASA), was unimpressed enough with his own encounter that he promptly forgot all about it until hearing media reports several days later of other local UFO sightings. I checked with the sheriff's departments of Pinellas County (which covers Tarpon Springs), Pasco County (covering New Port Richey and Hudson) and Hernando County, as well as the Tarpon Springs police. With the exception of Chancey's filed report, no one had contacted any of these agencies to report a UFO during the period in question. Although Platt wrote that the object "could go from still to warp whatever in the time it takes to snap your fingers," Chancey described the object's speed as "moderate," another witness as "slow," and no one is quoted as having seen the object vanish in a flash (although one said that "We looked away, and when we looked back it was gone."). Interestingly, according to Platt during an April 27 telephone conversation with Gary Posner, there is no mention in Chancey's official report of his having shined his spotlight on the object. Adjacent to Platt's April 20 article was one by Bill Adair about the annual Sun 'N Fun Fly-In, "an orgy of . . . bizarre-looking planes . . . " being held in Lakeland from April 18-24. The accompanying photograph was of an "ultralight" craft with a single wing, which looks for all the world like a giant boomerang. I called Adair to discuss the possibility that perhaps the Bayport "UFO" might have been an ultralight arriving for the show, but he thought not, since they are not permitted to be flown at night. However, he noted that there were many experimental, home- built "canard-style" or "Rutan-design" planes at the show, with stubby fuselage and long, tapering rear wing, which could look mighty strange "from certain angles, especially at night." I then called Gary Quill, manager of the Linder Regional Airport near Lakeland, who felt that the "home- built theory" to explain the UFO might be "on the right track." He confirmed the presence of many such craft at the show, some of which could have flown in via western Hernando County on the 16th. He added that such a sight might indeed appear "otherworldly." A member of the Fly-In Committee told me that of the several canard-style designs, the "Long-EZ" seemed to best match the UFO's description. She also put me in touch with an FAA official in the Linder control tower who, although reluctant to give his name, told me that at least 350 of the Long-EZ craft were flying into and out of Linder "all day Friday [the 16th] and Saturday." He said that they are allowed to fly "at any hour" and, also unlike ultralights, are required to have "running lights" (as did the Bayport UFO). He further described Linder Airport as the "mecca" for home-built and experimental aircraft, stating that pilots descend on the annual airshow "like a deluge." And, even more encouraging to my theory, he said that most participants tend to fly down along the west (or east) coast of Florida, before making the turn in toward Lakeland (Bayport is right on the western coastline). He even added that unless flying directly overhead, such a plane, like the reported UFO, would make no discernible noise. Was the Tampa Bay area visited by alien spacecraft this past April? Until more definitive proof of such an extraordinary hypothesis becomes available (if it ever does), I'll bet my money (and TBS bets its "$1,000 Challenge") that the Bayport "UFO" was a craft from this world, not from another. [Editor Gary Posner contributed to this report.] ********************************************************************* * -------->>> THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo <<<------- * *********************************************************************