Explained: Chilean Navy "UFO" video - Aerodynamic Contrails, Flight IB6830

Also you have changed your opinion on which plane about ten times since first posting and yet you say ahead of time that you debunked it. You didn't debunk it if your still trying to figure it.out. EXPLAIN RADIO COMMUNICATION AND NO RADAR AND HOW PILOT DOESNT KNOW DIFFERENCES AFTER YEARS OF FLYING. YOU ARENT TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THESE THINGS YOU SIMPLY ARE PUTTING SILLY GRAPHICS UP FROM GOOGLE EARTH WHICH DONT EXPLAIN THE 3 THINGS I HAVE MENTIONED

The two Santiago planes were there, they simply thought they were too far away. The Google Earth modeling demonstrates they were wrong.
 
The two Santiago planes were there, they simply thought they were too far away. The Google Earth modeling demonstrates they were wrong.
Again you have not answered my questions. Explain why it didn't respond to communications and how it did not show up on 3 different radar. I'll agree the planes were in the area you say but what planes don't show up on 3 different radar including a military targeting device and what plane captain of commercial jet wouldn't respond to several attempts to communicate from the Chilean military chopper. And you basically are saying that this chopper pilot and the engineer are both idiots who can't tell difference from planes taking off from Santiago which I'm sure they see on a daily basis whenever flying.
 
Again you have not answered my questions. Explain why it didn't respond to communications and how it did not show up on 3 different radar. I'll agree the planes were in the area you say but what planes don't show up on 3 different radar including a military targeting device and what plane captain of commercial jet wouldn't respond to several attempts to communicate from the Chilean military chopper. And you basically are saying that this chopper pilot and the engineer are both idiots who can't tell difference from planes taking off from Santiago which I'm sure they see on a daily basis whenever flying.
Like I said the French said what you said but then said it couldn't be true because the radar didn't pick it up.
 
Again you have not answered my questions. Explain why it didn't respond to communications and how it did not show up on 3 different radar. I'll agree the planes were in the area you say but what planes don't show up on 3 different radar including a military targeting device and what plane captain of commercial jet wouldn't respond to several attempts to communicate from the Chilean military chopper. And you basically are saying that this chopper pilot and the engineer are both idiots who can't tell difference from planes taking off from Santiago which I'm sure they see on a daily basis whenever flying.

Because they were not looking far enough away, or high enough, with the radar.
 
Edward Shultz -- you are assuming that all is as claimed to be in a report given by known poor investigators, heavily biased towards UFO's. Mick is dealing in actual facts that can be determined without relying upon that sort of thing.

Mick has shown that the 2 airliners were dead in the line of sight.

The fact that this was not even considered by the UFO promoters speaks volumes about their "investigation".
 
Because they were not looking far enough away, or high enough, with the radar.
Even with the radar your not explaining the radio communications . Did the plane radio go down. And if the ground radar didn't see it cuz of distance issues or altitude then why did the helicopter not get a chance to lock on to it if it was a huge plane?
 
Even with the radar your not explaining the radio communications . Did the plane radio go down. And if the ground radar didn't see it cuz of distance issues or altitude then why did the helicopter not get a chance to lock on to it if it was a huge plane?
They had alot of guys with alot of theories not able to prove them because of radar and radio. Yet you say you figured it out in no time and haven't used half of what they did when looking at the video and your saying they had distance wrong to fit your conclusion not because of any actual scientific data except that you say a plane was where you say it is. Yet you can't prove that because you don't have the access they have.
 
Edward Shultz -- you are assuming that all is as claimed to be in a report given by known poor investigators, heavily biased towards UFO's. Mick is dealing in actual facts that can be determined without relying upon that sort of thing.

Mick has shown that the 2 airliners were dead in the line of sight.

The fact that this was not even considered by the UFO promoters speaks volumes about their "investigation".
And the radio communications? Why did the plane not respond to requests to communicate? You can't answer that question with any of your graphs and 3D models nor can you explain. How experienced pilots not the investigators couldn't see difference between planes that take off every hour from Santiago and a UFO
 
The plane would be talking to Sandiago departure. You can't just hail them like a boat.

They would also be on Santiago radar.
 
Thanks Tom. In this image:
20170109-184543-w9y3z.jpg
Can you tell what the FOV is of the image? I see a 675 in the upper right, is that focal length?
Yes. Going around the video clockwise from upper-left, we see the Date & Time of the recording. I believe this is not guaranteed to be accurate, that it is just from an internal clock set using the menu system. We are looking at "VIC" (Video In Command) which is currently "IR" (thermal). The focal length is 675 mm -- this number is really only useful for comparison purposes if you know the focal plane size -- the sensors being used are much smaller than "35 mm", and so have a significant crop factor. Each of the sensors on most imaging systems generally have a different size, so they can't be compared to each other. The camera is focused at infinity (but not necessarily exactly). The INS is ALIGNING, so we don't have target coordinates (which would be invalid above the horizon anyway). Since we don't have a target, the ground altitude (-489 FT) is meaningless. The turret is connected to a GPS and receiving data, so we see the aircraft coordinates. The ticker tapes are indicating the elevation (vertical numbers) is about 0 degrees -- roughly the horizon, if the aircraft was flying straight and level and the gimbal was mounted level, and the azimuth (horizontal numbers) is at about 10 degrees off the nose assuming the turrent was mounted in-line with the aircraft (as they normally are, but not terribly precisely).

It's also worth noting that the Laser Range Finder (LRF), if the camera was equipped with one, wouldn't work at these distances.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks Tom. In this image:
20170109-184543-w9y3z.jpg

Also there's the different aspect ratios. Is the FOV the effective fully frame (some modes are full screen, some are windowed in the middle), or just the middle bit with video in it?

The FOVs quoted by Wescam in their datasheet are for the active portion of the video. That is, the 675mm focal length (which corresponds to what Wescam calls "1.1 degrees") means an angular field of view from the left side of the sensor image (not including the black bar) to the right side of the inset image. The HFOV of the entire image (including the black bars with no video) would be 1.1 * (1920/1280) = 1.65 degrees.

The fields of view they report for their EOW (Electro-Optical Wide) sensor are for the full frame width.
 
And the radio communications? Why did the plane not respond to requests to communicate? You can't answer that question with any of your graphs and 3D models nor can you explain. How experienced pilots not the investigators couldn't see difference between planes that take off every hour from Santiago and a UFO

Would the plane have known it was them that the helicopter was trying to call? I don't know what procedure is but if they were saying something like "unidentified aircraft in x location please respond" and the aircraft was transmitting its ID and in a different location would they respond?
 
The FOVs quoted by Wescam in their datasheet are for the active portion of the video. That is, the 675mm focal length (which corresponds to what Wescam calls "1.1 degrees") means an angular field of view from the left side of the sensor image (not including the black bar) to the right side of the inset image.
And from what @Mick West said earlier, the size is correct for the plane in question with a FOV of approximately 1 degree. So it all fits.

@Edward shultz People make mistakes. Once somebody thinks they have seen a UFO fairly close, their mind tends to follow that track and they don't consider a passenger aircraft twice as far away (or more). We've seen how that one-track mindset works in cases where contrails get mistaken for missiles or meteorites, even by military experts.

Question for you: we know that the planes were there, and we know that they appeared exactly where the object in the video appeared. So could you tell me what you think are the chances that not only did a UFO appear, but it also did so in a manner that kept it totally in line between the helicopter and the aircraft, so that it appeared in exactly the same location as the aircraft would. And it did this twice, with two separate aircraft?

To me that is stretching the bounds of credibility far more than a navy observer making a mistake when viewing a distant aircraft from an unusual angle.
 
Like I said the French said what you said but then said it couldn't be true because the radar didn't pick it up.
Can you explain your reasoning here? We know the planes were there: flight records and ADS-B data prove it. So if the radar operator didn't see anything on radar, that indicates one of three possibilities: equipment error, operator error, or (most straightforwardly) they were simply looking in the wrong place.
 
Maybe @TWCobra could comment on Satiago departures radio procedure. Could a chopper 40-60 miles away "hail" a departing plane?

Reading the original report, the helicopter seems to have tried to call on 121.5. The are a couple of problems with that, Most aircraft dont set that frequency until some time after takeoff which can vary from airline to airline, and if they were listening, unless whoever was calling used their callsign, they wouldn't respond.

I haven't been following this but the original Leslie Kean report left me underwhelmed. "Water would plummet to the ground"?

I happen to be in Santiago ATM and we'll be taking off in about 5 hours.
 
Well heck the track is actually in Flightaware too! With different yet matching ADS-B data.

20170110-114546-aer6x.jpg

20170110-114955-9eg8g.jpg
White line here is the Flightaware data. Green is Planefinder. This suggests IB6830 came even more to the south than I thought. Not a significant change though.

No track is available for LA330 in Flightaware.
 

Attachments

  • FlightAware_IBE6830_SCEL_LEMD_20141111.kml
    11.2 KB · Views: 843
No track is available for LA330 in Flightaware.
It is probably irrelevant after all. It is very likely that they followed only IB6830 all way through the video.

Here is the evidence that, I think, eliminates LA330. I looked at the ratios of the apparent lengths of the two trails to the length of the object (along its long axis). The first trail formation begins at 14:00:09 and stops at 14:00:42. Its final length is about 19 times greater than the object's length. In this 33-second interval, IB6830 had flown 8.5 km, that would be the actual length of its trail. The angle between the camera's direction and the IB6830 track was less than 5° at the time, therefore the track's perpendicular projection would be less than 500 metres*. It would give the object's long axis being less than 500:19 = 26 metres.
*There was a westerly wind at the time, that probably would deflect trails to the east by a few degrees, so the perpendicular projection of the trail and the object dimensions would be slightly greater (and more consistent with the A340 size).

The second trail was already formed when it was captured by the camera, but in 10 seconds from 14:01:42 to 14:01:52 its length increased by about 6 object's lengths. If the second trail had belonged to LA330, the actual length of this segment would be about 2 km and the perpendicular projection about 1500 metres (the angle between LA330 track and viewing direction is about 45°). This would give the object's long axis being about 1500:6 = 250 metres, far too big for any plane.

In contrast, the second trail length / object's long axis ratio applied to the IB6830 track gives about the same object's size, as the first trail. A smaller angle of the second trail to the horizon could be explained by the increasing wind speed with altitude, as IB6830 was climbing up at the time, and/or a minor course adjustment before crossing the Andes.
 
It is probably irrelevant after all. It is very likely that they followed only IB6830 all way through the video.

I've been beginning to suspect this for a while. the switchover is a little troublesome. I need to model the contrails in GE. BRB!
 
The second trail was already formed when it was captured by the camera, but in 10 seconds from 14:01:42 to 14:01:52 its length increased by about 6 object's lengths.

The first we see of it is at 14:01:35, the last where we can see the full zoom is 14:01:41, where it is 40% bigger. Implying it started at 14:01:26

20170110-130659-38bvo.jpg
 
Can we reliably derive object lengths given the thermal bloom problems already discussed? We're not really measuring the physical structure of the object.
 
Can we reliably derive object lengths given the thermal bloom problems already discussed? We're not really measuring the physical structure of the object.

No, but you can very roughly approximate the position of the center of the two blooms, which will give you the approximate position of a point between the two engines.
four-candles-metabunk-a340-UFO.jpg
 
The first we see of it is at 14:01:35, the last where we can see the full zoom is 14:01:41, where it is 40% bigger. Implying it started at 14:01:26

20170110-130659-38bvo.jpg
I have measured the increment of the distance between the centre of the object and a boundary between lighter and darker segment of the trail (arrow) in ten seconds from 14:01:42 to 14:01:52
Screen Shot 2017-01-10 at 21.20.43.png
The boundary remains well-defined during this interval before going out of the frame.
 
And the radio communications? Why did the plane not respond to requests to communicate? You can't answer that question with any of your graphs and 3D models nor can you explain. How experienced pilots not the investigators couldn't see difference between planes that take off every hour from Santiago and a UFO

This was one of the first flights that the crew was making with their brand new Wescam 15HDi. You can tell they're inexperienced because they have not done the correct flight maneuvers to align the camera INS. If they're at 4000+ft plus, they should have done it by now. They might have years of flight experience, but they have only hours of thermal camera experience on this aircraft.

If they HAD aligned the system, then you could get some more information from the pointing. But they didnt. So, the AZ and EL angles on the overlay are just the angle relative to the aircraft mount frame. You cant make many deductions about the relative altitude of the target because of this. When aircraft move, they dont fly level.

The GPS SHOULD have accurate time, but its possible to be inaccurate by small amounts. For instance, the terrain target altitude indication of '-489' is very unusual. It indicates the map system that was attached wasnt sending 100% correct messages. And if they used the map system to set the UTC offset(which is possible) they might not have done it correctly as well.

Tom is generally correct in his FOV analysis. With the focus set the infinity, it adds some randomness into the reading. The focus changes the FOV width slightly, and there is a lot of 'infinity' in this model of lens where you can still adjust the image. So, a few % off there.

The radio coms? Pilots have a lot to do. Why would they think a call, on a generic frequency, to the wrong location was for them? The thermal-camera inexperienced Navy pilots misjudged the distance. They hadnt aligned the camera to get an accurate bearing. They were 'expecting' a result on radar so were surprised when they didnt see it, and didnt think to look further.

Whats left to explain?
 
Last edited:
Perhaps something that might help convince people is matching the size and shape of the flares in the 675 images to the positions of the planes at the matching point. For example at 13:52:37 there's a contrast adjust that allows us to see more detail

It was suggested the "three flares" is a reflection off the body. However based on the angle of the plane at that point it looks more like the engines lining up.
20170110-220934-4haxk.jpg
 
Last edited:
Dear Mick: I am a newcomer to this forum. CONGRATULATIONS on your great job about finding the real causes of the objet captured on IR camera by the Chilean navy chopper. I am really glad to have found a forum of people oriented, like in my case, to a scientific demonstration of the true causes. My specific field of competence is on Unusual Aerial Phenomenae. My current assignment as Head of the Committee for Aeroespace Phenomenae Research (CEFAe) has become a full time job now. Our lately published UFO case Resolution Report, although in Spanish, (I promise to release an English version as soon as my time allows) can be found here:
https://www.faa.mil.ar/mision/informe_cefae_2016.pdf
Wish you all a great 2017 and KEEP UP THE GREAT JOB !!. RL.
 
Last edited:
I know know. But it seemed like they were saying that if it was too far for the laser to detect then they would not be able to see it. When they said "values of D above 15 m raised a problem of detectability (distance far above the indicated limit of visibility)"

It's like they are both saying "you can't see past 15m" and "you can see an unlimited horizontal distance"
In the French Report, they said visibility was 30 miles. D was the distance between the hotspots (aircraft engines) Their point was that if D was greater than 15METRES, the distance ( as shown on their table ) was more than the 30MILE limit of visibility.
 
But they do actually calculate distance and altitude. If we accept their distance data, should we not also accept their altitude data?
They pretty much explained that the altitude is not necessarily correct. They initially assumed same height, then calculated 5400m, and then admitted if the angle on the indicator was lined up with the chopper, and the chopper was at even a 3 degree angle it would make the height 14,800m. until someone (perhaps Tom Churchill) can tell us for certain what that indicator means, I wouldn't like to trust any height calculations.
That's apart from the fact ALL their calculations need redoing as they had the wrong turret.
 
In the French Report, they said visibility was 30 miles. D was the distance between the hotspots (aircraft engines) Their point was that if D was greater than 15METRES, the distance ( as shown on their table ) was more than the 30MILE limit of visibility.

Ah. Well "visibility" can mean a number of things. It does not mean things magically vanish at 30 miles in every direction and altitude. Especially large high-up objects.
 
I've been beginning to suspect this for a while. the switchover is a little troublesome. I need to model the contrails in GE. BRB!

Here is my attempt to demonstrate that the horizontal trail at the end of the video probably also belong to IBE6830.

I have added the IR 675 frame (horizontal FOV 1.1°) at 14:01:42 to Google Earth from the chopper's location at the time and superimposed the object on the IBE6830 position according to the FlightAware track (magenta line):
IBE6830.jpg
Note that this track deviates from a straight line and the corresponding segment has a gentle apparent slope than the previous one (where the first trail was observed). The change of slope is probably to a higher rate of ascent in this segment just before the Andes.

I also have modelled the trail by adding a 2 km piece of straight line (8 seconds of flight) at 10° to the track to account for the high-altitude westerly wind. It is plausible deviation from the track, as, according to the Earth server, the wind speed at 250 hPa in that general region at the time was up to 100 mph. I do not know how to tilt a line in GE, so I have addedd two parallel segments instead: the green one at the plane altitude and the blue one 100 meters below (the slope angle is less than 3°). This combination of aircraft climbing up and wind deflecting its contrail would make the trail look horizontal from the camera POV.

KMZ file is attached.
 

Attachments

  • 14-01-42 trail.kmz
    819.1 KB · Views: 783
Last edited:
I have added the IR 675 frame (horizontal FOV 1.1°) at 14:01:42 to Google Earth from the chopper's location at the time and superimposed the object on the IBE6830 position according to the FlightAware track (magenta line):

I just did a different calculation of the slope of travel of the plane by seeing how it moved relative to the contrail (which is a more reliable "fixed point" than the clouds of unknown distance.

Slope at end of trail 1
20170111-080359-lg666.jpg

Slope during trail 2 formation at 675 zoom
20170111-080437-ou4af.jpg

So I now fully concur that the entire video shows only IB6830.
 
I have added the IR 675 frame (horizontal FOV 1.1°) at 14:01:42 to Google Earth from the chopper's location at the time and superimposed the object on the IBE6830 position according to the FlightAware track (magenta line):

Similar, here I take the final shot at 135 (14:01:35). Green line is the Planefinder track for IB6830. Black lines are the segments of the track during contrail creation. Orange lines are the contrail blown East by about 5°. Red line is the track for LA330. The next shot is the second trail, and is in the region of the crosshair, hence it's IB6830.

20170111-085809-kmlzk.jpg
 
Back
Top