SCIFI guys,
I saw your ad and realized I HAD to send this in. On July 24, I went on a helicopter ride over Manhattan with a friend of mine (NOT my current boyfriend, so please don't print my full name, thank you) and we saw a lot more than we paid for! We are still trying to figure this one out! We saw a blimp while we were up there, so when we saw this thing we thought it was another blimp, and so did the captain, but then it kind of floated really quick. Then it kind of turboed right past us making this really loud jet sound!!!! Obviously we were all kind of freaked out at the time, but in the end it felt like whoever was flying it was kind of goofing around with us. It definitely seemed more like some kind of weird airplane than a UFO. Anyway, we have mostly just been showing the tape around to our friends and it freaks everybody out! What I'm wondering is, is it worth anything to you guys? Make me an offer, this would be perfect for whatever you're doing. Are you doing some kind of show like that old show with SPOCK about bigfoot and UFOs or something?



The Sci-Fi Channel's View:
UFO freaks are going to have a field day with this one. Although many flying disc sightings are attributable to blimps, balloons, clouds, reflections, meteors, or heat distortions, a small number are attributable to prototype aircraft - a notion the submitter even mentions possible.

More prototype aircraft are spotted and reported mistakenly as UFOs every year, and UFOs are such a historically popular concept that more than one ambitious person in the past has attempted to manufacture them. It seems entirely probable that some agency has finally been successful, given that even the Nazis were secretly experimenting with flying discs as far back as World War II.

The thing that strikes me as most clever about this craft is its camoflauge; it really moves like and appears to be a blimp, a common sight over New York. If I were a pedestrian, I probably wouldn't even look twice. However, when it moves, it glides so rapidly that the naked eye cannot easily track it... A very clever idea on the part of the designers, whoever or whatever they are, and a perplexing piece of footage which merits much closer examination."

Those are some good points. I think there are several interesting elements to the video which alot of people are overlooking, including myself... I have altered my initial description of it being a small UFO or object. I now believe it to be something rather large (if real at all, of course).

When the object is first spotted, it appears to come out from behind the trade center tower. This may or may not be the case. It could indeed be materializing. Some people see at the very start of the video what appears to be the craft BETWEEN the two towers, crossing behind, then first appearing on the right side, when the woman says "what is that?" This remains unclear to my eyes, however.

But, considering the distance the helipcopter is from the trade center tower, the size of the windows in the tower, the disc shaped object must be rather large, no? It certainly appears to be somewhat larger than the helicopter from that distance. If we assume it is a fair distance from the building also, but even farther away from the helicopter, then when it approaches the helicopter later tells us the object is much larger AND much farther away than it seems altogether; my first impression was of a small disc and came very close the the helicopter, but unless the UFO went from large to small, this is unlikely. That is to say, it is probably 15-20 feet in diameter, maybe larger, and when it comes toward the helicopter and makes that incredible upward turn, it is perhaps as much as 100 feet away from them when it banks. Hence, the contrail it leaves behind is reasonably distant from the helicopter, and leaving the illusion of something smaller. Watch it again and think big, and the dynamics of what you see make alot more sense.

Anything in motion can appear slightly transperant on video tape, and often does if examined frame by frame. Video imagery feeds at a 45 degree angle across the tape head. I've got video at home of my kid moving from left to right and several frames in slow-mo will show her head seemingly transparent to background items, which have simply been recorded already onto the tape and in the blur of motion blended into her head... something unseen when running at normal speed.

Indeed, this may be a fake. We know almost anything can be done electronically and digitally nowdays. This is definitely one video that needs alot of expert analysis.