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From: Christophe Meessen <meessen@cppm.in2p3.fr> Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 11:44:47 +0100 Fwd Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 20:22:55 -0500 Subject: Re: Belgian Radar-Visual I would like to add some perspective to this information. We do have different type of evidences but SOME of them have found a possible explaination. My father proposed an explanation for all radar related evidences. The current conclusion is that MOST but NOT ALL radar evidences are artefacts. The first type of artefact are atmospheric diffraction as correctly stated by J.Pharabod. But they have a caracteristic signature that make them easy to identify. The most important of them is that there is no correlation of these echos between two radars. The second type of artefact are convection bubles. In this case two different radars will report an echo at the same location. Second, it appeared that flight identification normaly sent by airplanes could be mistakenly affected to these bubles. This appeared when I noticed that two simultaneous and independent echos showed the same military flight identification. This was obviously bogus and we guess result of a reflection on the convection buble of the identification signal sent by the original plane. But these type of artefacts can also be identified because they all follow wind direction (thus parallel for all tracks), fly at a relatively constant altitude, and a constant speed. When seeing these many unexplained echoes my father was suprise by the apparent indifference of these phenomenon from the radarist who learned to live with it. These two artefact types are specific to ground radar and concern civilian as military radars. I must say here that there is one echo track we found that can't be classified in these two categories. But in general apparently no correlation was seen between ground visual observation and radar echoes. Now about the F16 radar echoes. This was intensively studied and compared with previous studies. This event had ground visual observations by different gendarmes (policemens) at different location, ground radar echoes from civilian and military and of course the F16 radar recordings. But even with all these extraordinar conjuction of evidences, all of them could be explained by conventional phenomenon. This does not mean there was not an UFO, but it means that the question becomes undecidable. At least this study unveiled a potential problem with radar using doppler effect. Again F16 radar echoes with similar behavour is frequently seen at 30000 Feet and was told by the pilots themselves. But in this case it happened at a much lower altitude. This night meteorological conditions were also unusual. I can give more details on this study if requested. The final conclusion I would like to make about this information is that this does NOT explain UFOs reported from visual contact or on photographs. For instance the photograph of a triangular object over Petit Rechain has been give a high degree of credibility after deep study. About radar evidences all we can say is that it is possible that UFOs that may have flown over belgium where not detectable by our radars. So to me what happened in Belgium these two years remain an unsolved mystery and the proposed explanation for radar evidence hardly scratch the mystery. It would be, in my opinion, a mistake to draw any other conclusion on the belgian ufo flap. Ch.Meessen
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