In 1994 Military Helicopter monitors Orb near Crop Circle

J

johne1618

Guest
The following video "Military Helicopters and Balls of Light (part 1)" comes from "Crop Circles: Quest for Truth DVD Extra (2002)" (Starts 18:16)


Source: https://vimeo.com/521666420

The video was shot in 1994 near the "CBS Eye" crop circle in East Field, Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, England.

I am personally skeptical about crop circles. I think all the complex ones are man-made whereas a very small fraction of simple circles might be wind damage.

But I am interested in this video which seems to show a military helicopter, with a radio antenna mounted on its nose, monitoring an "orb" or ball of light in a field near a crop circle in 1994. The helicopter has a flashing white light on its tail fin which can be easily distinguished from the flashing white orb which is on the ground most of the time.

If you slow down the video to 0.5 speed you can see the following:
  1. The flashing ball of light some distance directly in front of the helicopter at 21:21 to 21:31.
  2. The ball of light goes behind the helicopter and flashes on the ground from 21:42 to 22:02.
  3. The helicopter backs up so the flashing light can be seen below and to the front of it from 22:29 to 22:39.
What was this ball of light and why were the military so interested in it?

I don't think the military would have been that interested in it if it was a bird and in 1994 there were no drones.

Could aliens have been checking out crop circles using some sort of probe?

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very compelling footage. UK military helicopters just don't come out to investigate things like that, they are clearly taking it seriously. Also it disappears in the exact same fashion that most witnesses describe 'UFO's' disappearing.
 
very compelling footage. UK military helicopters just don't come out to investigate things like that, they are clearly taking it seriously. Also it disappears in the exact same fashion that most witnesses describe 'UFO's' disappearing.
Do you have any evidence they (the helicopters) are taking it seriously beyond your speculation?
 
i dont see the light move, based on your photos. the cameraman moves. you can see that from the bushes.
 
What a slog, trying to watch 22+ minutes of this guy for that little bit of jerky video. I wanted to see what the context of the video was, according to the "researcher", Colin. What I seem to get, in a long winded meandering tale, and full confession, I had to skip a bit, was that a stranger came to his door and after several hours of conversation, the stranger told Collen, "your one of us now". The stranger was CIA, so I guess Colin was made like a "junior secret agent" or something. Then Colin gets taken to a secret flat where he almost got to meet a guy that would tell him how to read newspaper ads for codes about crop circles. Then we learn that it was maybe an attempt to cover up that some crop circles are not man-made and it was all counter-intel or some such thing. Very cloak and dagger stuff.

I only summarized this to illustrate this is our main witness.

They claim there's a crop circle under what appears to be military helicopters doing some training, it's never in the video that I see, so we have to take his word for it. Colin gets very dramatic about how dangerous and low they are flying.

More shaky footage, more helicopters.

Then one helicopter flying along slowly, hovers and backs up, while something flashes on the ground.

What ever is flashing stays in the same spot. It does not flash in a regular order.

It looks a lot like a piece of reflective trash stuck in the weeds and blowing in the wind or a piece of galvanized metal on the ground being concealed and revealed by the weeds blowing in the wind. Note the foliage in the foreground blowing in the wind.

The piolet may be aware of it, but there is no way to tell. It's very possible, whatever is reflecting is NOT under or in the flight path, but further away.

That the piolet is trying to back up and see it again, is purely speculation on Colin's part.
What was this ball of light and why were the military so interested in it?
We don't know that they are.
I don't think the military would have been that interested in it if it was a bird and in 1994 there were no drones.
It's neither, as it's on the ground. The guy filming it even says it's on the ground.
Could aliens have been checking out crop circles using some sort of probe?
What crop circle? It just looks like a field. If they are, they're not very stealthy about it.
 
Here's what I'm seeing, and how I interpret it. If anybody can nail down the location, we could look on Google Earth for the distant road...


Red arrow -- nearby roadway, accompanied by a line of intermittent bushes. A car passes along that road starting at around 21:49.
Green arrow -- another line of intermittent bushes, which look to me to be near or just beyond a gentle hill crest. I suspect this is another road.
Blue arrow -- in upper image, a bit of light reflected off of the car as it enters frame. In the lower image, a subsequent appearance of the intermittent light seen in the distance, along the line where I suspect there is a road. I believe there is a good chance that, assuming a distant road along that second line of bushes, this "light"is being caused by reflections off of a vehicle or vehicles passing along that road, flashing when the angle is right and/or between bushes.

Capture2.JPG
 
very compelling footage. UK military helicopters just don't come out to investigate things like that, they are clearly taking it seriously. Also it disappears in the exact same fashion that most witnesses describe 'UFO's' disappearing.
Do you have any evidence they (the helicopters) are taking it seriously beyond your speculation?
yes... 20 years service in the UK armed forces. Plus, believe me, military helicopters do not hover over random patches of field for 10 minutes, (well certainly not in the UK) unless there is a serious incident reported...so something brought them out there to that patch, coincidentally close to what appears to be a moving orb.
 
i dont see the light move, based on your photos. the cameraman moves. you can see that from the bushes.
True - it seems that the flashing light is stationary on the ground the whole time while the helicopter approaches it from the left, overshoots it’s position and then backs up over it. As you say the changing positions of the bushes show that the cameraman moves his position quite a lot.
 
Here's what I'm seeing, and how I interpret it. If anybody can nail down the location, we could look on Google Earth for the distant road...
a youtube vid clip has that footage labeled as "alton Barnes wiltshire uk". (esp near "silbury hill") when you google that seems crop circles were abundant out there and a problem for farmers.
 
yes... 20 years service in the UK armed forces. Plus, believe me, military helicopters do not hover over random patches of field for 10 minutes, (well certainly not in the UK) unless there is a serious incident reported...so something brought them out there to that patch, coincidentally close to what appears to be a moving orb.
That's not evidence. I did five years in the US armed forces. I have seen helos fly stationary, dip sonar in the Suez canal (probably not for submarines) and all for no reason. Maybe they went to check out an anomaly but that is no reason to suggest there was a serious incident reported. Unless you have some evidence beyond personal incredulity.
 
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It looks a lot like a piece of reflective trash stuck in the weeds and blowing in the wind or a piece of galvanized metal on the ground being concealed and revealed by the weeds blowing in the wind.
It seems to me that the helicopter with the external antenna was trying to locate the object using radio direction finding but overshot it’s position and had to back up. A piece of metal trash doesn’t emit radio signals.
 
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It seems to me that the helicopter with the external antenna was trying to locate the object using radio direction finding but overshot it’s position and had to back up. A piece of metal trash doesn’t emit radio signals.
Why do you say that?
What type of helicopter is it?
Does/did that varient have RDF?
Speculation is a violation of the posting guidelines.
 
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True - it seems that the flashing light is stationary on the ground the whole time while the helicopter approaches it from the left, overshoots it’s position and then backs up over it.
Overshoots it? The pilot goes a full ~30m past it. So:
1. He's not a very good pilot. (I don't think so)
2. He can't see the "alien orb", even though we (and the guy filming) can.

So the "orb" is probably not directly below the helicopter, otherwise the pilot would have seen it and hovered over it, or he did see it and decided it wasn't worth looking at.

Technical data for Aerospatiale SA-341 "Gazelle"
Engine: 1 x Turbomeca Astazou IIIA turboshaft, rated at 440kW, main rotor diameter: 10.50m, overall length: 11.97m, height: 3.15m, take-off weight: 1800kg, empty weight: 908kg, max speed: 310km/h, cruising speed: 233km/h, rate of climb: 9.0m/s, service ceiling: 5000m, range with max fuel: 670km, range with 500kg payload: 360km
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Heliphoto.JPG
 
appears to be military helicopters doing some training
that was my first thought as well
the crop circle is a very nice target for that

it's easy to impute some purpose you expect (taking it seriously, don't want us there) by projecting your own motives, and it seems to me the narrator is doing that
It looks like a Westland (Aerospaciale) Gazelle AH.1
Article:
On the night of 11–12 July 1992, a crop-circle-making competition with a prize of £3,000[41] (funded in part by the Arthur Koestler Foundation) was held in Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by three Westland Helicopters engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a plank, string, a telescopic device and two stepladders.[42]

I'm questioning the assumption that these helis are flown by the military. The site is only a short distance from the factory.
SmartSelect_20211127-053316_Samsung Internet.jpg
 
Why do you say that?
What type of helicopter is it?
Doesdid that varient have RDF?
Speculation is a violation of the posting guidelines.
Ok sorry I did overdo the speculation without evidence.

Can anyone identify where the video was taken? I thought I saw a glimpse of Silbury hill around 21:13
 
Just watched the whole video. It seems to me they were already in a "alien craft" mindset during the filming, listening to the discussions during filming.

FWIW, I have been in Dartmoor national park (not extremely far from discussed event) a number of times (hiking), and one time a military helicopter was "buzzing" us, and it seemed to us they just liked to show off a little (look at us in our big shiny copter, dudes!). In the video above, it looks like a similar kind of event. But that is just IMO.
 
Regarding what's seen in the video between 21:21 and 22:02.

As previously said by Deidre and Johne1618, it's clear that both the camera and the helicopter move, when the camera pans up rapidly at 21:42.

The way the video was edited makes what's shown between 21:21 and 22:02 look like continuous shooting; a quick fade down/fade up at that point would have been more appropriate perhaps. However there is clearly a section of video missing, or the camera was turned off at 21:42.

To make this clear, I grabbed stills showing the orb during the section 21:21-21:42 (top in image below) and 21:42-22:02 (bottom). I put a circle around the orb position to highlight it.



There is a small bush (at 1) along the line of what looks like a hedge between fields in the distance, there are a pair of bushes next to the road in the near distance (at 2).

In the bottom image the bush at 1 is about 40% of the image width further to the left, while the bushes at 2 are about 80% left. This is what what you would expect to see if the camera was moved a conciderable distance to the right. The change in angle of the track marks through the field that end just below the pair of bushes is consistent with this too.

Comparining the two images, the orb seems to be at the same position relative to the bush at 1, so no movement of it seems to have taken place in the period 21:21-22:02.

So all I can see in that part of the video is a flashing light (probably at or close to ground level) that doesn't move, a helicopter that does (between two cuts in the video) and some suspicious (or just sloppy) editing that suggest 21:21-22:02 is a continous section of recording.


As for the actions of the helicopters being unusual. The Alton Horse is only 9km away from Salisbury Plain, which for decades has been the location of all sorts of miltary training and exercises.

https://www.forces.net/documentary/history-salisbury-plain
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/salisbury-plain-training-area-spta-newsletter
https://wiltshiretoday.co.uk/huge-a...ozens-of-helicopters-in-skies-over-wiltshire/
 
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As for the actions of the helicopters being unusual. The Alton Horse is only 9km away from Salisbury Plain, which for decades has been the location of all sorts of miltary training and exercises.
Article:
Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA) is located 19 kilometres (12 miles) north of the city of Salisbury in Wiltshire.

Site description

The total area of the current SPTA estate is just over 38,000 hectares. SPTA measures 40 by 16 kilometres (25 by 10 miles) and occupies about one ninth of the county of Wiltshire.
 
Just a few points:

- if the film was taken in 1994, it will be difficult to match vegetation in the film with recent imagery on Google Earth. In a period of nearly 30 years the layout of fields may have changed, trees, bushes and hedges may have been removed ('grubbed-up' in farmer-speak), and new trees or bushes may have grown. An ash tree could grow from a seedling to maturity in that time.

- on the other hand, public roads and footpaths are unlikely to have changed much in that part of England. There hasn't been a huge amount of new residential building to necessitate new roads, while old public roads and paths are pretty much timeless. (Public footpaths and bridleways are protected by law.)

It was suggested in #6 above that the 'orb' might be something on a road roughly parallel to the visible one. If that one is the road to the north of Stanton St Bernard, I don't see (on Google Earth) any suitable public road between that one and the white horse visible on the hillside. But this is mainly farmland, and there are farm tracks which might be suitable. Even without a track, farm vehicles (tractors, diggers, etc) might be in the area. Such vehicles do often have lights on top of the 'cab', as viewers of 'Clarkson's Farm' may recall, though I doubt if any vehicle in the film was a Lambo.
 
Even without a track, farm vehicles (tractors, diggers, etc) might be in the area.
or the glint off a camera lens of another crop circle fanatic.

in someone's attic, there is probably footage of them filming towards Colin's crew because all they can see of Colin is the glint off his camera and they are saying "Look an orb, that helicopter is checking it out.. he almost hit his blades into the hillside he is so interested in the orb!"
 
I think I've got the various viewpoints seen in the video during the segment identified in the OP mapped out now and they are all within an area about 1.5km square around the sleepy little village of Alton Priors (51°21'32.16"N , 1°50'35.64"W). I'll be "showing my work" so this post will be a bit picture heavy.

The village is located at the bottom of the hill (to the South East) of the Alton White Horse.

Here's a map of the area, the horse a little to the left of center top and Alton Priors a bit below the center of the map. I've marked what I believe are the locations of all the major points of interest in the video between 20:06 and 23:47.



So, how did I work out those locations?

Let's start with the Alton White Horse. Its location on the side of a hill limits the viewpoint seen in the video I believe, to the road that approaches Alton Priors from the West. Here's the view of the horse from the video and then the view from the road (marked "View of white horse location" on my map). I don't know exactly where along the road the video was taken, but it provides a pretty much unobscured view of the horse and a long section is straight, so seems to be the right location.






Now for the other locations.

From 20:06, a helicopter is seen maneuvering at low level over a field with buildings in the distance.

Wide view of buildings


Zoomed in view of church (upper right corner).


Zoomed in view of barn (just in front of helicopter).


Suspecting that the buildings seen in the video might be a location near the white horse, I looked for a village nearby and the nearest is Alton Priors.

There is a church (All Saint's) there that looks like this, which seems to match the one in the video.


The barn was very distincitve, so I had a look on Google Earth for something similar in the village and found it. It's location in the map image is where the "Alton" of Alton Priors is.


Looking at Google Earth I found the approximate viewing angle that these two could be seen from, at the type of angle seen in it and it's a hill with a road running up it, to the NNE of Alton Priors. As the view in the video seems to be looking down into the village, I looked for points along the road affording such a view and this image shows the location that I belive that part of the video is shot from (View into Alton Priors on the map). The church can be seen a little left of center, in the upper half of the image.


In the image "Wide view of buildings" taken from the video, a fence is seen in the foreground for a moment, that seemed a match to the one in the my pic of the viewing location. I grabbed the pic below for a better angled view of it and it does seem very similar, in particular the steep downward angle between the two posts.



With that location identified I turned to the task of finding the viewing location of the "orb" itself.

Something I noticed in the video at around 21:13, when the camera pans left briefly, was a distinctively shaped steep hill, appearing almost cone shaped, off in the distance. It's only seen then for a moment and a again for a fraction of a second later in the video. However as the rest of the video in which the "orb" is seen is just gently rolling landscape, with few discernable features, that steep hill was my target.


When I grabbed the 2nd of the Alton Priors viewpoint images (the one for the better angle of the wire fence), something in the top left of the image attracted my attention.

Here's a closer look at what I'm referring to.


That steep sided hill with a small peak looked similar to that seen in the video, but the terrain in the foreground wasn't quite right, in particualar the angle of the hedge lined road beneath it. So I trudged (digitally) up the hill from this viewpoint, along the road out of Alton Priors until coming to a location that gave this view (position is "View of orb location" on the map).



The area highlighted lookd like a good match to that seen in the video. Here's a closer view of it.


Here it is with a frame from the video overlaid.


I think it's a very close match and any small differences in some angles and proportions could be due to differences in the lenses used for the video and Google Streetview cameras. Additionally there are plenty of places along the road on which I've marked the position for this recording, so it could have been taken from somewhere else, close to the place I identified.

The dark, near horizontal line in the lower part of the video clip is a road (it enters Alton Priors from the East). The thin line midway up the video which seems to be close to the distance of the "orb" (position of that marked by center of the crosshair), is a hedge between fields.

So I think that this is the location of the orb nailed, assuing that it is close to ground level.
 
Nicely done Ivan.

I got a bit curious about the crop circle in question - "the CBS eye" - and found that it seems more commonly referred to as "the Eye of Horus". It's this one:



Apparently it was found around the 19th or 20th of June - and solstice seems like a very popular time for making crop circles in that part of the world (what with Stonehenge and the celebrations there, etc - I went one year, it was pretty mad).

East Field also seems to be an incredibly popular place for making crop circles.

Interestingly, I found an FOIA request asking the military if they'd sent any helicopters to check out this circle. The reply stated that their records didn't go back that far, but that "if information is held, it would most likely be in The National Archives."

The same FOIA request also asked for details around another more recent crop circle, made in 2011. The reply said:

I can confirm that in the calendar month following the discovery of the crop formation (June 2011), RAF Chinooks were in the area on 17 different occasions. There were no Chinook tasks that were authorised as investigating the crop formation and there is nothing stating that Milk Hill was a specific destination during this time period. It has not been possible to establish if any other types of helicopters were present during this time period due to the limitations of flight logging at the time.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/727214/response/1786261/attach/html/3/20210510 FOI03279 Response.pdf.html
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From this I guess we can deduce that many military helicopters are in these areas all the time, and that it's probably just coincidence (and possibly not even a military helicopter).

Also, what with pilots being human also, it seems only natural that they would check out things like crop circles while buzzing about.

Finally, why are they calling it a "ball of light"? I see flashes of light, but I don't see any "balls of light".

Speculation is a violation of the posting guidelines.

Is that so? I don't see it listed.
 
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believe me, military helicopters do not hover over random patches of field for 10 minutes

I only watched a bit of the video in the OP, but from what's shown it doesn't look like they're hovering over that patch for very long. Is there a part where the narrator says they were hovering for ten minutes?

It seems to me they were already in a "alien craft" mindset during the filming, listening to the discussions during filming.

The narrator is Colin Andrews, who claims to have coined the term "crop circle" in the mid-eighties. He's one of the most well-known researchers in the field and a true believer. He's written many books on crop circles, UFOs, the Akashic records, quantum physics, harmonic transitions, and 2012:

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/e...age=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader

This page has quite a lot of details about him too:

https://isgp-studies.com/crop-circles-in-wiltshire-uk-and-us-real-or-not
 
yes... 20 years service in the UK armed forces. Plus, believe me, military helicopters do not hover over random patches of field for 10 minutes,
In my experience they do. Particularly in the Salisbury Plain area, and often during training or reconnaissance flights and exercises, which the Gazelle was used extensively for. There's nothing to suggest the helicopter was in the area for anything other than the usual reasons.
 
The 'cone shaped' hill in the distance could well be Silbury Hill, a famous manmade neolithic monument. (Possibly a burial mound, though archeologists have failed to find anything in it.) It is only a few miles from Alton Barnes, so it could be within viewing distance, but I haven't yet checked sightlines, etc.
 
Great work by Purpleivan! Thanks a lot! I was wrong to identify the conical hill seen in the top left hand corner of the helicopter/orb shots with Silbury hill.

GlobularOrb identified the helicopter as a Gazelle with a FM homer antenna on its nose that was used with the old Clansman radio system. GlobularOrb also gave a link to a webpage with the following information:

SA 341B (Westland Gazelle AH.1)
Version built for the British Army; Featured the Astazou IIIN2 engine, capable of operating a nightsun searchlight, later fitted with radio location via ARC 340 radio and modified to fire 68mm SNEB rockets. First Westland-assembled version flown on 31 January 1972, this variant entered service on 6 July 1974. A total of 158 were produced. A small number were also operated by the Fleet Air Arm in support of the Royal Marines.
https://ukdefenceforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=187

The radio location function of the 3-receiver ARC 340 VHF/FM system used on Gazelle helicopters is mentioned here:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2IM9EzzGK4AC&pg=RA9-PA14&lpg=RA9-PA14&dq=arc+340+vhf&source=bl&ots=Kh39CCH_QQ&sig=ACfU3U0PppyJx-1jXml54Yt4dC7g4M_-7g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwid6Yvs4L30AhWONcAKHVwdCAkQ6AF6BAg6EAI#v=onepage&q=arc 340 vhf&f=true

Therefore an important function of the radio system on the helicopter shown in the video was to locate soldiers as well as communicate with them. Perhaps it could have been used to locate the flashing orb too if it was giving off radio signals in the VHF/UHF range?
 
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I found this bit in the transcript of a podcast episode on crop circles, it's a comment by a person who claims to be a former military pilot. Pretty sure he's talking about the video in this thread. It's quite long so if you don't want to read the entire thing, the gist of it is that he's quite certain there's nothing particularly strange about this, it's just normal helicopter anti-tank training.

Some speech-to-text errors but nothing too egregious (wheelchair = Wiltshire I'd assume!). I also don't know where the podcast falls on a skeptic - believer scale as I'm not familiar with it but anyway this is a listener's comment.

43:30
Well, we're going to switch gears here. We did want to, before we dive into everything tonight, we wanted to talk a little bit about a couple of emails we got from an Australian helicopter pilot who was so kind as to write in once he heard the series. Glad to have him as a listener, his name is Mark. I just want to read this first note from him. He says, "Hi Scott. I would like to emphasize my point about the general public's perception of military forces and personnel. My experience also extends to the US military. I spent about six months training at Fort Rucker, Alabama and later traveled extensively to Fort Lewis, Washington in the late 90s. Most military personnel are employed in 'green roles'," he puts that in quotes, "I.E. conventional operations using conventional equipment and operating under standard security clearances. Military personnel are just a subgroup of your everyday community.
They have partners, kids, pets, and mortgages just like everyone else and have surprisingly similar interests and aspirations, but they often have access to state-of-the-art equipment. Most conduct themselves as expected, but occasionally an opportunity arises to either have some fun with the public or just do some rubber necking in the public eye. However, once you enter the covert special world of black operations and intelligence, it is a different story. Surveillance by nature is clandestine and therefore not obvious and certainly not by noisy helicopters and low flying jets. I am certain all militaries and intelligence agencies have a great interest in fringe subjects, but one would never know. That is the nature of security. When I was in the UK, 1990 and '91, the British army were investigating the efficacy of using airships for surveillance of the IRA. The airships could loiter quietly for extended periods inside the cloud at night, employing advanced infrared and thermal imaging equipment.
Imagine what is available now. Forrest mentioned some videos from the 80s or 90s that featured military helicopters, perhaps similar to this one." He sent a video link and it was, in fact, a link from one of the documentaries with Collin in it and the helicopters are buzzing as he's driving by. Mark says "In this video, one can see a Gazelle and Lynx helicopter clearly practicing advance to contact in the anti-tank role. The investigator does not appreciate that wheelchair is right in the middle of one of the busiest army training areas in Europe. I will not discount the investigators comment about the ball of light. I can't see anything. The pilot is certainly not backing up to keep something in sight, probably just drifting due to inattention. One never backs a helicopter without pedal turning to clear the tail. The crop circle and onlookers just happened to be a passing distraction during a routine training flight.
It seems to me that even the most intelligent and well-informed investigators lose their critical thinking when certain emotive subjects are encountered, mixing the mundane with the genuinely unexplained makes it so much harder for all of us to make any sense of what is going on. After all I have said, I am still convinced the crop circles are one of many unexplainable phenomenon. I am still full-time employed in aviation and do a lot of night work using night vision imaging system, and a little surprised about how little I have seen in 34 years. Only 40 minutes flight south from my home city, Cairns, is the location of a very old crop circle story, saucer nest. So I have always been on the lookout." So he's saying here he's 40 minutes flight from the original Tully saucer nest and what he's reacting to here is this video that we sent him, where Colin is talking in a documentary about these helicopters, which they filmed and there seem to be a little ball of light in or around the helicopters.
I thought this was an interesting perspective because Mark is clearly saying, "Look, this is a classic military procedure that's going on here. There's training going on with how you, an anti-tank helicopter approaches, forgive my terminology I know I'm screwing that up Mark when you hear this. But here's the thing with that first video he sent, I couldn't really see the ball of light, but then Forrest, you had tracked down two other ones that were much, much clearer. And I shared those with Mark just today as we're recording this and I got lucky because when I sent them to him it was 4:30 in the morning, his time in Australia, but he got up at 6:30 for a flight and he checked his email and he wrote back about these clearer videos.
"Hey Scott, lucky you did catch me at 6:30 AM and I'm about to leave the hotel for a ferry flight from Brisbane to Cairns and all day event. Thanks for the video. The quality is far better than the one I linked. Yes, I can see the light ball, but to say definitively what it is, maybe a genuine ball of light, a piece of metal or aluminum foil reflecting the sunlight or maybe something else. I don't know. Sorry. I'm still unconvinced about the role of the two army helicopters in anything other than normal anti-tank training. Either of the crew may have seen the ball of light and pointed it out as a curiosity. Surveillance by helicopter is best done at height, at least above a thousand feet above ground level and usually in a slow wide orbit so that the FLIR camera operator," that's forward-looking infrared I believe, "Can stab the head to the target."
I think stab means stabilize. "I would not use helicopters at all if I were assigned the task to monitor crop circles and or investigators." So the flight maneuvering he's talking about there is certainly very familiar to me with the LAPD because that's what they do. They go to altitude, not always the thousand feet, but they get up there and they circle and that's how they do their surveillance. So I think that's, he's describing a similar maneuver there and they have FLIR on their choppers.
A couple of points here of discussion. You can find those clips that I saw with the DVD of Crop Circles: The Quest for Truth, the documentary is my favorite...
Link to full transcript https://www.astonishinglegends.com/al-podcasts/2021/05/8/ep-208-crop-circles-part-3
 
Perhaps it could have been used to locate the flashing orb too if it was giving off radio signals in the VHF/UHF range?

My feeling on watching the video is that if they were looking for the source of the flashing light - I see no reason to call it an "orb" - and felt there was anything unusual about it they would have stayed longer than thirty seconds.
 
I found this bit in the transcript of a podcast episode on crop circles, it's a comment by a person who claims to be a former military pilot. Pretty sure he's talking about the video in this thread. It's quite long so if you don't want to read the entire thing, the gist of it is that he's quite certain there's nothing particularly strange about this, it's just normal helicopter anti-tank training.

It seems strange to be conducting anti-tank training within 1000 meters of the hamlets of Alton Priors and Alton Barnes (see post #25).

Colin Andrews states that the crew of the Lynx helicopter (around 19:44 in the video) were filming the crop-circle researchers. Why would the military on anti-tank training be doing that?

Also at around 20:10 the Gazelle helicopter was wheeling around in the field right next to Alton Priors just a few hundred meters away. Again why would the military on anti-tank training be doing that?
 
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My feeling on watching the video is that if they were looking for the source of the flashing light - I see no reason to call it an "orb" - and felt there was anything unusual about it they would have stayed longer than thirty seconds.

Maybe they knew that the flashing object would eventually disappear if they harassed it enough? The witnesses confirm that the object seems to have gone around 23:46.
 
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Also at around 20:10 the gazelle helicopter was wheeling around in the field right next to Alton Priors just a few hundred meters away. Again why would the military on anti-tank training be doing that?
Nap of the earth flying training to avoid detection by enemy air defences.
 
Colin Andrews states that the crew of the lynx helicopter (around 19:44 in the video) were filming the crop-circle researchers. Why would the military on anti-tank training be doing that?

He states that, but it doesn't mean they were doing that.

at around 20:10 the gazelle helicopter was wheeling around in the field right next to Alton Priors just a few hundred meters away. Again why would the military on anti-tank training be doing that?

The account posted by Easy Muffin is probably the best answer to that question.
 
Apropos of nothing, if you scroll north a bit to the Pewsey Downs Car Park, and wind the street view car back to 2011, there's the distinctive silhoutte of a Westland Sea King heading west, in the direction of the white horse. Possibly a Wessex but it seems to have a hull:



Obvious not a low pass, but I spotted it after a couple of clicks so it must be a fairly popular helicopter destination. Presumably the Gazelle in the OP was already in the air when the pilot decided to use Alton Prior as a makeshift Fulda Gap.
 
It seems strange to be conducting anti-tank training within 1000 meters of the hamlets of Alton Priors and Alton Barnes (see post #25).
Dunno, but if you drive around that general area you see a lot of these.
4129931.jpg
(This picture found online -- my personal picture of this sort of sign from this area is upstairs in a pre-digital-camera photo album and the cat sleeping on me prevents my going to scan it! The comfort of the cat must be the first consideration.)
 
Re: the crew supposedly filming the people on the ground, the same person also shares a funny anecdote how he himself once wound up in the papers as shady government operative whilst out on a training flight.

54:54
"I listened with great interest to your crop circles part one. The phenomenon has always been fascinating to me due to a personal experience during 1990 to 1991, I was an Australian army helicopter instructor on exchange to the British army at Middle Wallop in Hampshire, UK. Sometime during the summer of 1991, I was one of the military helicopters reported by the local media. The reports indicated that I was conducting secret military surveillance of the crop circles and the special interest groups investigating. When in fact the truth was I was just using the advantage of my position and had my student fly about the circle while I got some photos for the family. My work colleagues thought it was all quite amusing that the Aussie had generated some stir in the media. They were all very flippant about the phenomenon and so they were all hoaxes.
Personally, I was not convinced I had flown over the same field no more than 12 hours before at night, whilst on night vision goggles and had not seen the markings. Although I have no record of the exact date and location, I do have one photo, a scan of a positive print. I'm sure databases exist of the shapes and the date and location could be determined. Let me know if you'd like a copy. Incidentally, I know from personal experience that some black military helicopter reports are just crews having a bit of fun or just genuinely interested on whatever happens to be the subject. Military personnel are just another part of the community that happened to have access to some fantastic equipment. I may or may not have been guilty of scaring a train driver in the night with a close encounter spotlight routine. All very funny until someone loses an eye.

I don't want to suggest that the crew in the video was just out there having a laugh but I think it raises an interesting point, namely that quite often in these UFO stories any military presence is taken as proof that there must be something going on that's serious enough to get some vaguely defined government spooks involved, when it might as well be something entirely innocuous. Just normal people going about their day, having some fun.
 
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