UFO REPORT really just a Huey in Vermont

I sat down to write this story about us being turned in at a UFO and
the telephone rang, INTERUPTING ME. Now I gotta go to some stupid
meeting and can't write the story and embellish it like I would like
to do. So, here's the truth about what happened:

I'll cut it short.

I'll never forget this one. I was in the helicopter (Huey) in fog
hovering in an intersection in the country far out in Vermont one
morning. We were lost. I mean, we really weren't LOST, we knew about
where we were. But, we were low, between the mountains and we didn't
have any VOR reception.

I know it's probably amazing to many of you, but there was a time when
here was no LORAN or GPS. People actually navigated in aircraft like
they did in boats. They dead reckoned, timed legs, used "pilotage"
.....all terms that are completely foreign to the modern pilot.

Well, that morning we took off from Westover AFB in Springfield Mass.
We navigated through a mountain pass to Albany, NY in wx that was
scary. Twenty feet above our heads was the cloud deck and the tree
tops were 10 feet below our floats. The Visibility in fog was about
500 feet most of the time but went to 50 feet many times.

When we got over the mountains, we were lost, but still in that little
"visual" gap between Earth and the ceiling. We motored along in the
fog until we came to a road. Hovering there my buddy (and the PIC),
Mike Smith (who was a great pilot and later became a Frontier Airlines
Captain) looked to me and said, "You fly this son of a bitch for a
second while I pull a coin out of my pocket."

"I got er, Captain!" I said as I hovered still over the road.

"Okay, heads we go left, tails we turn right." Mike said.

He flipped it. Heads it was., and we peeled of to the left at about
50 feet AGL and 200 foot visibility.

He looked over to me and said, "I got the controls. Get that damn
road map I threw in here this morning. It's in my flight bag there."

I grabbed the road map and sort of figured out where we were.

"Mike, I think we're about here, but we need to read a road sign."

"Yeah, we gotta be somewhere close to that. If this wx comes down
anymore I'm going to set her down in a field and wait a few hours for
this **** to burn off."

"Fine with me Cap." I said. "I got a great book in my bag I'm
reading on quantum mechanics. Let's just kick back and wait it out."

About then we came to an intersection with road signs on all four
corners. It wasn't any big intersection, just the perpendicular
crossing of two "two-lane" roads.

Mike hovered the Huey in the middle of the intersection so we could
read the road signs. Just as we were hovering there and figuring out
where we were, a woman, driving a tractor, which was dragging trailer
full of hay, came out of the fog, 200 feet in front of us.

We were lit up like a Xmas tree with strobes and rotating beacons,
landing lights on projecting beams of light through the fog...whatever
we had to light that thing up because the fog was thick and that was
the procedure.

She got close enought that I saw her eyes. They got as big as silver
dollars. She almost wrecked the tractor turning it around by driving
it into a ditch off the road. The tractor tires were just spinning,
flinging mud everywhere as it pitched and rocked and rolled.

As soon as she had appeared, she was gone, back into the fog in the
opposite direction. I looked at Mike. "Damn, Mike, that was goofy.
We scared the **** out of that woman. Why the hell do you think she
cut and ran like that?"

Neither of us had a clue.The wx got better, we had found ourselves and
we headed north to Vermont and sampled lakes for the day.

That night back in Massachusetts we were watching the 6 o'clock news
and they were interviewing some woman south of Albany who had phoned
in a UFO report. She looked bug-**** crazy on the TV as she told them
about this big white hovering "ORB" she'd seen at an intersection as
it was zapping road signs with ray guns. She told them of the aliens
she saw with lots of facial hair hanging out of helmets behind the big
"Bug" eyes of the space craft.

Hell, that was me with my red beard hanging to my shoulders behind one
of the two main Plexiglass windows of the Huey.

I know this is hard to believe, but this really did happen... 32 years
ago.

BWB

In article ,
(Badwater Bill) wrote:


I sat down to write this story about us being turned in at a UFO and
the telephone rang, INTERUPTING ME. Now I gotta go to some stupid
meeting and can't write the story and embellish it like I would like
to do. So, here's the truth about what happened:

I'll cut it short.

I'll never forget this one. I was in the helicopter (Huey) in fog
hovering in an intersection in the country far out in Vermont one
morning. We were lost. I mean, we really weren't LOST, we knew about
where we were. But, we were low, between the mountains and we didn't
have any VOR reception.

I know it's probably amazing to many of you, but there was a time when
here was no LORAN or GPS. People actually navigated in aircraft like
they did in boats. They dead reckoned, timed legs, used "pilotage"
....all terms that are completely foreign to the modern pilot.

Well, that morning we took off from Westover AFB in Springfield Mass.
We navigated through a mountain pass to Albany, NY in wx that was
scary. Twenty feet above our heads was the cloud deck and the tree
tops were 10 feet below our floats. The Visibility in fog was about
500 feet most of the time but went to 50 feet many times.

When we got over the mountains, we were lost, but still in that little
"visual" gap between Earth and the ceiling. We motored along in the
fog until we came to a road. Hovering there my buddy (and the PIC),
Mike Smith (who was a great pilot and later became a Frontier Airlines
Captain) looked to me and said, "You fly this son of a bitch for a
second while I pull a coin out of my pocket."

"I got er, Captain!" I said as I hovered still over the road.

"Okay, heads we go left, tails we turn right." Mike said.

He flipped it. Heads it was., and we peeled of to the left at about
50 feet AGL and 200 foot visibility.

He looked over to me and said, "I got the controls. Get that damn
road map I threw in here this morning. It's in my flight bag there."

I grabbed the road map and sort of figured out where we were.

"Mike, I think we're about here, but we need to read a road sign."

"Yeah, we gotta be somewhere close to that. If this wx comes down
anymore I'm going to set her down in a field and wait a few hours for
this **** to burn off."

"Fine with me Cap." I said. "I got a great book in my bag I'm
reading on quantum mechanics. Let's just kick back and wait it out."

About then we came to an intersection with road signs on all four
corners. It wasn't any big intersection, just the perpendicular
crossing of two "two-lane" roads.

Mike hovered the Huey in the middle of the intersection so we could
read the road signs. Just as we were hovering there and figuring out
where we were, a woman, driving a tractor, which was dragging trailer
full of hay, came out of the fog, 200 feet in front of us.

We were lit up like a Xmas tree with strobes and rotating beacons,
landing lights on projecting beams of light through the fog...whatever
we had to light that thing up because the fog was thick and that was
the procedure.

She got close enought that I saw her eyes. They got as big as silver
dollars. She almost wrecked the tractor turning it around by driving
it into a ditch off the road. The tractor tires were just spinning,
flinging mud everywhere as it pitched and rocked and rolled.

As soon as she had appeared, she was gone, back into the fog in the
opposite direction. I looked at Mike. "Damn, Mike, that was goofy.
We scared the **** out of that woman. Why the hell do you think she
cut and ran like that?"

Neither of us had a clue.The wx got better, we had found ourselves and
we headed north to Vermont and sampled lakes for the day.

That night back in Massachusetts we were watching the 6 o'clock news
and they were interviewing some woman south of Albany who had phoned
in a UFO report. She looked bug-**** crazy on the TV as she told them
about this big white hovering "ORB" she'd seen at an intersection as
it was zapping road signs with ray guns. She told them of the aliens
she saw with lots of facial hair hanging out of helmets behind the big
"Bug" eyes of the space craft.

Hell, that was me with my red beard hanging to my shoulders behind one
of the two main Plexiglass windows of the Huey.

I know this is hard to believe, but this really did happen... 32 years
ago.

BWB



BWB's story reminds me of one of my own. 40 years ago I was living in
Huntsville, AL, and would go home to northern IL for Christmas and
Thanksgiving.

I was in a flying club that had a 180 hp Comanche and flew it home for
Christmas. Both my brother and my folks lived in the country, about a
mile apart and I would buzz the places to let them know that I would
need a pickup at the airport.

I arrived about 9PM and hit the prop to "high RPM" and turned on the
landing lights (tip mounted) as I went over their place. My brother's
house has a big bay window in the living room, where the TV set is. They
were just opening the 1953 movie, "War of the Worlds" as I arrived
overhead, as the Martians were landing on TV. It had to be quite an
event to see the Martians landing on TV and suddenly see those two
landing lights suddenly shining in the bay window.

Great story Bill. Burn a copy off and add it to manuscript pile:
"Looking for Mr. Badwater" ; you know, kind of like 'Looking for Mr.
Goodbar' (only more mysterious) You'll discover mutant RAH posters
swimming in your lake samples and realize there must be a reactor leak
somewhere, but the dirty bomb terrorists are on to you, so they keep
trying to kill you with women truck drivers....

You write a book like that, and all these pudknockers will buy a copy.

I get to be a technical advisor on the cargo chapter.

pac

(Badwater Bill) wrote in message ...
I sat down to write this story about us being turned in at a UFO and
the telephone rang, INTERUPTING ME. Now I gotta go to some stupid
meeting and can't write the story and embellish it like I would like
to do. So, here's the truth about what happened:

I'll cut it short.

I'll never forget this one. I was in the helicopter (Huey) in fog
hovering in an intersection in the country far out in Vermont one
morning. We were lost. I mean, we really weren't LOST, we knew about
where we were. But, we were low, between the mountains and we didn't
have any VOR reception.

I know it's probably amazing to many of you, but there was a time when
here was no LORAN or GPS. People actually navigated in aircraft like
they did in boats. They dead reckoned, timed legs, used "pilotage"
....all terms that are completely foreign to the modern pilot.

Well, that morning we took off from Westover AFB in Springfield Mass.
We navigated through a mountain pass to Albany, NY in wx that was
scary. Twenty feet above our heads was the cloud deck and the tree
tops were 10 feet below our floats. The Visibility in fog was about
500 feet most of the time but went to 50 feet many times.

When we got over the mountains, we were lost, but still in that little
"visual" gap between Earth and the ceiling. We motored along in the
fog until we came to a road. Hovering there my buddy (and the PIC),
Mike Smith (who was a great pilot and later became a Frontier Airlines
Captain) looked to me and said, "You fly this son of a bitch for a
second while I pull a coin out of my pocket."

"I got er, Captain!" I said as I hovered still over the road.

"Okay, heads we go left, tails we turn right." Mike said.

He flipped it. Heads it was., and we peeled of to the left at about
50 feet AGL and 200 foot visibility.

He looked over to me and said, "I got the controls. Get that damn
road map I threw in here this morning. It's in my flight bag there."

I grabbed the road map and sort of figured out where we were.

"Mike, I think we're about here, but we need to read a road sign."

"Yeah, we gotta be somewhere close to that. If this wx comes down
anymore I'm going to set her down in a field and wait a few hours for
this **** to burn off."

"Fine with me Cap." I said. "I got a great book in my bag I'm
reading on quantum mechanics. Let's just kick back and wait it out."

About then we came to an intersection with road signs on all four
corners. It wasn't any big intersection, just the perpendicular
crossing of two "two-lane" roads.

Mike hovered the Huey in the middle of the intersection so we could
read the road signs. Just as we were hovering there and figuring out
where we were, a woman, driving a tractor, which was dragging trailer
full of hay, came out of the fog, 200 feet in front of us.

We were lit up like a Xmas tree with strobes and rotating beacons,
landing lights on projecting beams of light through the fog...whatever
we had to light that thing up because the fog was thick and that was
the procedure.

She got close enought that I saw her eyes. They got as big as silver
dollars. She almost wrecked the tractor turning it around by driving
it into a ditch off the road. The tractor tires were just spinning,
flinging mud everywhere as it pitched and rocked and rolled.

As soon as she had appeared, she was gone, back into the fog in the
opposite direction. I looked at Mike. "Damn, Mike, that was goofy.
We scared the **** out of that woman. Why the hell do you think she
cut and ran like that?"

Neither of us had a clue.The wx got better, we had found ourselves and
we headed north to Vermont and sampled lakes for the day.

That night back in Massachusetts we were watching the 6 o'clock news
and they were interviewing some woman south of Albany who had phoned
in a UFO report. She looked bug-**** crazy on the TV as she told them
about this big white hovering "ORB" she'd seen at an intersection as
it was zapping road signs with ray guns. She told them of the aliens
she saw with lots of facial hair hanging out of helmets behind the big
"Bug" eyes of the space craft.

Hell, that was me with my red beard hanging to my shoulders behind one
of the two main Plexiglass windows of the Huey.

I know this is hard to believe, but this really did happen... 32 years
ago.

BWB