A lost flight

Graham Shepard is a veteran airline pilot. He graduated from Hamble Flying Academy in Southampton in 1966. He has flown many types of aircraft and is very skilled and experienced. Hamble College can be called the "West Point Military Academy" in the world's aviation community. It is famous for its strict, high-quality, strict discipline and hard training. In 1966, Graham, who was working as a co-pilot for Vic Pioneer Airlines, met Timothy Goode, who later became a famous UFO researcher, on a plane.

Puerto Rico is a place where UFOs often appear and is also a place full of stories related to aliens. Goode and Graham did a lot of research there. An incident that occurred there in 1993 was shrouded in mystery and left them puzzled. Although nothing extraordinary occurred during the entire process, what happened was indeed related to external phenomena.

Let Graham himself tell the whole story:

In March 1993, I was employed by British Airways. Before coming to Puerto Rico, I had just completed a routine flight on a B767 to Paris and back to London. All this time, including flying to the Caribbean, I was in good health. On March 1st, I did all the routine pre-flight checks and everything was normal.

At 9:05 local time on March 2, I piloted a Cessna 172 aircraft (registration number: N92256) to taxi and take off. I planned to fly west along the coast to the town of Arecibo, and then Pass the radio telescope of the same name to the south, fly over it for 10 to 15 minutes for photography, and then fly directly to the Mayaquis Airport on the west coast for a stop.

At first, everything flew smoothly according to plan. After a night of rain, the weather was getting better, and there was a bit of a northerly wind at 600 meters, which I remember clearly. When flying over the radio telescope, the clouds were a little lower than expected, but the light and height were enough for me to get good photography with a Panasonic NVS-7 camera.

After completing the photography within the stipulated time, I climbed to the 660 meters displayed on the barometric altimeter and started flying towards Mayaquis Airport. (This height is the result of taking into account the terrain and cloud base. If it exceeds 750 meters, I have to pass through the clouds and cannot see the ground or other aircraft. I was using a camera at the time, so the critical height of 660 meters was covered. Recorded.

Mayaquez Airport is 40 kilometers west of Arecibo. To be precise, Mayaquez is at 250° from Arecibo. Magnetic field lines, considering that most of the direction instruments installed on aircraft are E2 compasses, the true direction must be converted into a magnetic direction. The difference between the true direction and the magnetic direction at any position on the earth's surface is the "magnetic difference". In this case, the magnetic variation shown on the chart is 11° west longitude, which when added to the true route is 261°. This degree is absolutely guaranteed to fly from Arecibo to Mayaquis in still air. Affected by the north wind, I adjusted the compass to 270° and flew into the wind. The airport should soon appear on my left. Because of the error technique, which means artificially correcting the wind flow, I can use some angles perpendicular to the route. There is nothing worse than arriving at a landmark and not knowing whether to turn left or right.

40km follow! The estimated ground speed was 2.4 kilometers per minute and the flight would take 17 minutes. In addition, I adjusted my heading slightly to the west, and I should be able to see Mayaquis Airport in 15 minutes. However, this was far from the case!

Lateral displacement.

I adjusted the course from the Arecibo radio telescope to Mayaquis, maintained an altitude of 660 meters, and adjusted the compass to 270°. All of this was clearly recorded on the camera tape. Taking into account the wind direction, wind force and direction of 270°, I will arrive a few kilometers above the Mayaquis Airport, then turn left and fly around to land on the runway facing east.

Leave the radio telescope. After five or six minutes, I was happily cruising and taking pictures, but a sense of uneasiness and confusion spread throughout my body, especially regarding my bearings. I didn’t know where I was! All I knew was that as long as I maintained a heading of 270°. , the route would stay along the coast; in addition, I noticed that the north wind was weakening, which gave me a greater margin of error. After all, it was such a short distance that I expected that the time to reach the destination would not be affected too much.

As the seconds passed, I was still confused about the direction, but I thought that the features of the coastline that were perpendicular to the route would soon appear in front of me. Once I got there, I would just turn left. Entering the Mayaquis Circle area, the uneasy feeling lingered.

I was surprised to see the coastline not to my right, but parallel to me! In other words, mine. The heading was wrong! The route I designed was to fly along the north coast of the island, but in fact it was flying along the south coast. After passing Guanica, I could clearly see the southwest tip of Cabo Rojo on the island. , I realized that I was about to enter the US Air Force R-7105 restricted area, the tethered balloon radar base! The navigation error is outrageous! How is this possible?

To be honest, incomprehensible lateral displacement did occur.

I had no clue, so I could only write heavily in the aviation diary of that day: "Arecibo radio telescope - navigation error, disaster!"

A few years later, Timo Gu and I Mr. De took the same Cessna 172 aircraft and flew it twice along the route that year. Our findings remain disturbing, and answers remain elusive to this day.

The first re-flight

On October 24, 1998, Timo Goode and I left the Isla Grande Airport in Puerto Rico at 11:25, strictly in accordance with the 1993 The route will be flown on March 2, 2018. The weather was nice, with a similar northerly wind.

It takes 18 minutes to get from the Arecibo Radio Telescope to Mayaquis. On such a clear day, we left the radio telescope and flew for 5 minutes before we could clearly see the west coast, and a few minutes later we saw Mayaquis Airport. This was only a short flight of 40 kilometers, and even if there were some clouds on March 2, 1993, there shouldn't be much difference. The smoothness of this re-flight made me feel the absurdity of the encounter in 1993, and it also highlighted that something unusual did indeed happen, and it was definitely not distraction, hallucination, or intentional. It must also be pointed out: I made absolutely no navigational mistakes.

So, is it possible for me to fly south to the Guanica area at an altitude of 660 meters without crashing? To answer this question, we waited another 3 months and took the second flight.

The second flight

On January 21, 1999, we took off from Isla Grande Airport at 10:40 and flew along the same route. This time, we did not stop over the radio telescope, but continued to fly southwest to the obvious barrier - the Cordillera Central Mountains. On the zoning map of the United States, the height of the site showing this feature exceeds 1170 meters. Taking into account my starting and ending positions, there is a contour line that must be passed along the route that is also 900 meters long. There is no doubt that if I could see the clouds and the terrain clearly, and if this were the case that day in 1993, I would fly away from the Central Mountains in a heartbeat. But no matter what, I flew over the mountains to the south coast after all the hardships. Fortunately, I didn't hit the mountains.

When we flew into Adjunta Airport, the altitude was about 700 meters. Obviously, to fly over the Central Mountains, at any point we must be higher than 900 meters. When it passed a mountain col on the edge of the town of Kastna, the altitude of the plane was 1020 meters, with towering peaks on both sides. Soon we reached Ponce and the southern slopes of the Guanica plain. After landing safely in Mayaquis, the doubts that had been troubling me—that I had chosen, intentionally or unintentionally, such a dangerous and complicated route—quickly disappeared. But this only deepened my uneasiness and confusion about the whole incident.

Radar Factors

Civilian radar can only monitor aircraft within controlled airspace near San Juan and Isla Grande airports. Once outside this range, you have to contact the Radar Advisory Information Center. I usually look for them so I can find out what planes are nearby. In controlled airspace, you must use a radar transponder to tell you your altitude, position, and sometimes speed. Beyond the range, such as in the 1993 incident, beyond about 8 kilometers west of the airport and into the range of the Radar Advisory Information Center. At low altitudes, such as further west in Arecibo, people monitoring the radar may no longer pay attention because the radar receives no feedback. I don't know what the situation is with military radars. Maybe they have other functions and will notice my situation. But in theory, someone somewhere must know my displacement, but the chance of me knowing is zero.

Meteorological records

Finally, we also inquired in detail about the meteorological records on March 2, 1993. The only thing that could explain the flight deviation was the non-seasonal wind at an altitude of 600 meters. . Although there was no turbulence caused by high winds, considering that my deviation started from the moment I left the Arecibo radio telescope, I needed to find sufficient evidence to prove that I crossed the route, such as a northern storm of at least 130 kilometers per hour. To answer this question, I consulted the National Weather Center's weather records for that day in Asheville, North Carolina. The ground weather conditions 15 minutes before my takeoff were: north wind 9.26 kilometers/hour, clouds spreading at 600 meters. The visibility is 12.8 kilometers and the temperature is about 24.4°. The weather on the ground when I arrived in Mayaquis at 10:50 was: northeast wind 18.52 kilometers/hour, clouds dispersed at 900 meters, visibility 16 kilometers, and temperature 27.2°C. How could such beautiful weather be so lost?

To sum up, the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. An unexplained lateral displacement affected a simple, ordinary flight.

2. Wind and weather conditions are not one of the factors causing displacement.

3. The terrain conditions made it impossible for me to fly that route.

4. The camera tape clearly shows the flight parameters, altitude, heading, clouds, Arecibo radio telescope and arrival position on the south coast.

5. All the aircraft's instruments have always been normal. The rotating compass and E2 magnetic compass are updated in accordance with operating procedures and are only used when needed on the ground.

After flying for 14,000 hours around the world, I have never encountered such a bizarre and frightening flight.

But I still remember an incident told by a colleague: when he was flying from the Mona Strait in Dominica to Puerto Rico, he noticed that the compass on the backup E2 instrument was spinning uncontrollably!

Goode Graham's report was sent to many pilots he knew, but no one could provide a reasonable explanation for the unexpected displacement. Sir Mark Thomson, a former Royal Navy jet pilot, reacted with shock and bewilderment: "This is, without a doubt, the most significant piece of evidence I have ever seen. A pilot who has been flying all his life, in such a good situation The weather makes such a simple and easy flight. There is so much evidence, and now there is more powerful evidence. We can't explain this phenomenon with the existing laws of physics, but it happens without a doubt. . I think they control time, space and distance.

But why did they 'move' Graham? ”