Miscellaneous

veer ed oft to follo w the JAL flight path at a lower altitude. Just before
the two plane s pas s ed one another, the white ligh t disappeared. "It was like
a dream. Unbelivable," aaid Terauchi. Terau chi pos tul ates that whatever he
saw was friendly. "I can't understand the technology, but it was not
dangerous. It was completely controlled . " If he sees the objects again,
he's ready to try communicating. Perhaps four bl inks of the wing lights,
then two more. In Morse Code, he says , t hat ' s "HI. "
CONTROLLER SAYS UNKNOWN IMAGE WAS TRACKED ON RADAR--Three air traffic
control lers tracked on radar an i mage that seemed to be following the
November 17th fli ght of a Japanese Air Lines cargo plane, according to one of
the controllers who helped monitor the radar. The captain of the JAL plane
reported that an unidentified flyin§ object was tailing his aircraft at the
same location as the radar image. All three of us thought there was a
track," said Sam Rich, a controller who has worked for the Federal Aviation
Administration for more than a decade. A track is what air traffic .
controllers call t h e r adar image of an aircraft. Rich said he was on duty
for the half-hour duri ng which the JAL plane reported apotting the UFO. Rich
aaid the -pilot s ounded shaken. "He was concerned. There was a quiver in his
voice." Rich s ai d the controllers immediately turned down their radar range
to small-scale that would better define the air apace around the JAL plane.
"There did appear to be a track near the plane about where he (the pilot) said
there waa. So we kept looking." The track was not real atrong, Rich said,
but neither h e nor any of his colleagues then thought it might be a split
image.
After spotti ng the track, Rich said he called the Military Regional
Operation• Control Center. "They informed me that they had the same track.
Another controller told the pilot to make a aeries of turn• and a descent in
an effort to shake the UFO. Finally, as the plane headed 1outh from
Fairbanks, the controllers lost track of the UFO. The FAA launched a major
review of the radar tapes and concluded that the track wa1 a split or double-
image of the JAL plane. Rich confirmed that double images often occur on the
FAA radar s creen, which relies on the computer-generated data. But the plane
didn't f l y through the areas where the split images normally occur. The JAL
pilot isn ' t the first pilot to report strange things in that northern
corridor. Du.ring the past decade, there's been about a half dozen reports of
unidenti£ied l i ght s from civilian ~nd military p ilo ta ~ ~It's pretty real to
them ( the pilots), w Rich said.
AVI ATI ON WRITER SAYS ALASKA UFO PROBABLY PLANET JUPITER--The three-man crew
of t h e JAL airliner who observed a huge UFO over Alaska on November 17, 1986,
probably observed nothing more than the planet Jupiter, according to Phillip
Klass , an aviation writer. According to Klass--who was described as an
"exper t " and "professional investigator"--the very bright planet was only 10
degrees a bove the horizon making it appear to the pilot to be at roughly his
own a l ti tude of 35,000 feet. (EDITORS NOTE: According to the astronomy
departmen t at the University of Washington, Seattle, the planet Jupiter was
20- degrees above the southern horizon, not 10-degrees. One would have to be
very desperate to explain away this UFO incident with the explanation that
the crew observed the planet Jupiter. To the crew, Jupiter would appear as
a dis t ant white light, not ae a walnut-shaped object the size of two
aircraft c arr i ers.)
EX-PROFESSOR THEORIZES ALIEN BEINGS--Aliens from distant worlds may be
watching Earth and making unofficial contacts with selected humans, says a
recentl:1 r e t ired scientist at Or·egon St ate Universit-y. His theory is that
advanced space beings ma-y have adopted an embargo on official contact with
earthlings, wi shing to avoid the chao s t hat could sweep the planet if their
presence were suddenly revealed. Instead, the-y have adopted a "leaky
embargo" pol i cy t hat allows contact only with citizens whose stories are
unlikely to be credi ble to scientists and the government, said the scientist
James w. Deardor ff , $8, profe s sor emeritus of atmospheric sciences. "They
just want to let u s know who are prepared to accept it in their minds that
there are other beings," Deardorff said. "Th ey may want to slowly prepare us
for the shock that could c ome later when they reveal themselves." Deardorff
who retired in Sept ember , 1986, ba s been de s cribed by colleagues as one of
the moat illustrious members of OSUs a t mospheric sciences department. His
research on atmospheric turbulence and boundary-l ayer e.ffe_ct a earned him the
fi eld' s highest honors, including t he 1978 Rossby gold medal of the American
Me t eorological Society. Yet t he lure of extrat er restrial mysteries
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