The circumstantial evidence I found myself in possession of, has always been sufficient to lead me to a conclusion that what I witnessed was not 'conventional' in any way.

This photo of Hale-Bopp is my own that I took with an old Russian ZENITH SLR. I don't say there is anything unusual or out of the ordinary with this photo. It's just a shot of the comet a week or so before I had my UFO sighting, which originated exactly in that specific point of the sky.

Whatever terrible deception the cult members succumbed to perhaps it is more prudent to mention my 2nd & most recent UFO sighting. Such events, I should mention, in passing, are for me at least far from frequent. This was my second, in 20 years.

I was out frequently in late July/August 1997 watching & often photographing, with aid of a tripod, Hale-Bopp in its later days of visibility. One night what I presumed to be a *meteorite came shooting out of that part of the sky, precisely from Hale-Bopp's receding tail. I followed its very fast movement only to find that there was now, at a lower altitude (but same general trajectory) a fairly bright red/orange incandescent, shimmering object where the meteorite would have been at that very moment. It was moving horizontally & at a constant velocity.

This would have occurred somewhere over the coastline by Scarborough, Yorkshire, UK. This was moving now far slower than the point spot of white light ("*meteorite") and on a trajectory exactly consistent with that of before. The object seemed to have a rough DELTA or wing shape though hard to verify. I estimated it at several thousand ft altitude maybe & moving at several thousand kph. These are only guestimates I made at the time to help me record or describe with some scientific method what I had just witnessed.
It moved 'due west' across the barren N.York moors by my estimates and then either went behind haze, cloud or physically vanished. I estimate, from memory since I lost my written up report that the whole event lasted around 20-30 seconds.

I decided to make a serious effort to verify this observation. I telephoned Fylingdales early warning station (now part of the US led 'Son of Star-Wars' network). This station was about 45km (FylingDales) NNW of my location at that time. I managed to get to talk to the Officer of the Watch who said he would look at the radar logs for the previous night and get back to me. I felt I trusted this guy as I had suggested it might have been space junk, shuttle or whatever.

When we spoke the next night, he said there had been absolutely nothing logged. Fylingdales was probably located pretty much underneath this object and wouldn't miss it accidentally is what I have always believed.
Just today, 12/06/2006 I have found out that quote: "the radar's software is designed to ignore targets that do not behave like a rocket being launched or a satellite..." This from the Subbrit FylingDales link above. Their website states:
"On a visit to RAF Fylingdales in 1997, RSG members were told that the radar's software is designed to ignore targets that do not behave like a rocket being launched or a satellite in orbit. It is little surprise, therefore, that the RAF says that the station has never detected a UFO in flight!"

Fylingdales has a direct link to SATCOM & NORAD and uses amongst other technologies, SSPAR or Solid State Phased Array Radar as part of the PAVE-PAWS early warning defence system.

What really amazes me to this day is the following:
a) That this object should appear to come out of the direction of Hale-Bopp of all places!
b) That it moved horizontally after having appeared initially as a tiny and rapid "*meteorite".
c) That its incandescent crimson red glow fits perfectly the tolerances for a flying disk running at low energy:
Unconventional Flying Objects'
(Paul R Hill. A time served, ex-NASA boffin: ISBN 1-57174-027-9 pp 61) Quote abridged:
"All UFO color [...] from energetic, ionising radiation [...] red & orange correspond to least energy" This is just essential physics. Since we talk of visible light:
"Higher frequency photons have more energy. A photon of blue light is more energetic than one of red light."
Pp 67 'Modern Physics' Kenneth Krane.

To conclude. I believe that what I saw was of extraterrestrial dimensions. Whether piloted by humans or ET itself, who knows? As an afterthought I would like to ask the question: Did someone visit Comet 'Hale-Bopp'? Admittedly, it is not logical to presume that just because this 'object' appeared to come from the area of the sky into which one would travel from my point of visual reference to intercept the comet that this is actually what was happening. However, 'Absence of evidence does not infer evidence of absence.' Additionally, by incorporating observations described above concerning the radiant colour of the object, which infer that, it was a craft capable of, as I observed in its manoeuvre, extremely rapid rates of deceleration & travel, then such a journey of ... millions of miles, being of only short (minutes?) duration at FTL velocity would entail a 'bee-line' trajectory with no reasons to deviate if it was to re-enter or enter earth's atmosphere at the very point I observed it to. These are my measured opinions!

I gave a full report a day or two after the sighting in 1997 to Anthony Dodd, an ex-policeman & investigator at the time for UFO Magazine, near Leeds, Yorkshire, UK.
(UFO magazine, recently discontinued in Spring 2004) 
(This article 24/03/03 reviewed 12/06/06 & again 30/03/2007).

Regarding enquiries I made as to the ability of technology at Fylingdales to detect UFO's.
In regard of questions on specifics I outlined relating to my visit and tour of Staxton-Wold a subsidiary Early warning station working alongside or as well as Fylingdales: -
I got the following from 'Subbrit.org.uk.'

"The system at Fylingdales is designed to track ballistic objects, it does not track aircraft at 3,000 feet (or 30,000 feet), people flying kites, or the local model aircraft club. It is specifically looking for objects with a ballistic track. When it obtains a 'picture' of an object on a ballistic track it searches its' memory to see if that track already exists. If it does then it tags it with the track number. If it doesn't recognise it then it alerts the operators of the system. A set procedure is then implemented to deal with that alert (we are aware of what that procedure is but decline to detail it).

Whilst on the tour I watched the Space Shuttle come up on track, I didn't watch any 747's on their way to the USA (or anywhere else) because there were none on the display - the system doesn't look for them.

The system you looked at may well have been a general radar system that could plot aircraft and tag them or read the Squawk (transponder signal) and bring it up on screen (very easy to do, most radar systems allow it to happen, you just need the base information). You can learn more about transponders by searching the web or watching the recent cinema film 'United 93' which is now released on DVD, available from the excellent www.play.com

I've done a lot of work on large screen radar displays over the years through my job, but as you must appreciate, am limited in what I can tell you.

I am not aware of any type of SSPAR system at Staxton Wold, the 3 principal sites being Fylingdales, Thule (Greenland) and a third at Clear in Alaska.

Tours of Fylingdales are readily available to the general public but must be pre-booked. Contact the base commanders office for further details on these tours which are free of charge."
EOF.

In fact I was able to determine from my visit to Staxton-Wold that the British MOD or others were, some ten years ago already testing and deploying prototyping versions of a portable SSPAR early warning radar. This portable version of a battlefield tactical warfighting technology does not exist, 'officially', to this day. Yet I literally walked around inside it!

When I visited Staxton-Wold radar station, the crew were 'running-in' an SSPAR system. A single 3 sided truncated pyramid. They were having a great deal of trouble keeping it running. Whilst I was in the mobile trailer from which the monitoring operations were being carried out, the Traveling Wave tube cut out at least once, and I had to be ushered out of the 'box' whilst the operators attempted to restart the thing. There was just a crew of one or two guys in Army overalls or uniform doing this work with a further group of characters in work overalls, watching TV and supping Tea in a portacabin 50 or 60 feet away.
I was told by the army radar operator introduced to us in the trailer by the tour-guide, that the system could be dismantled and moved to a new location within about 8 hours, adding, "I probably shouldn't be telling you this".
Yet all this emergent technology is deliberately designed not to detect unidentifiable objects.

My finalé is, that I do not believe that UFO's exist; I know that they exist, but not because of this questionable evidence above but because my previous sighting a full twenty years before, was the antithesis of questionable. It could not be explained away or have been anything else.

Read on brave adventurer!

The image above is 'identical' to what I saw, hanging stationary over central, downtown Manchester UK from my viewpoint about 2 & 1/2 miles away near my home in Salford UK in summer of '77. Despite the age of this 'fake' shot, it shows 'antigravity' pod detail underside and what are apparently not portholes on the top of the disk. This Original Adamski photo is widely accepted to have been a fake. Following my 'PERFECT' & infallible observation in 1977 I can deduce and therefore conclude:- but was it?
When I saw the nearly if not exactly identical object, it was hanging at a slight angle, just as portrayed in this alleged fake. I was able to see the layout of equipment below the disk. Previous to this sighting, I had never seen this photo or one with any close resemblance to it. In fact the first time I was struck by the comparison, was when I found this exact print (hence the quality) during the mid-1980's. The object would have been by my average knowledge of Manchester geography, close in the vicinity of Manchester University or UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology), or the central Oxford Rd area.
The University of Manchester is the location, incidentally, where in 1919, in a gloomy cellar laboratory, the atom was smashed for the very first time. It was apparently not Cambridge University, where Rutherford was alleged to have first 'cracked' the atom.

What I can say, dear reader is that the sighting of the above object was 100% accurate.
The only alternative explanations on my list being:

1. Hallucination. This I strongly rebuke as a one in a hundred million possibility since I have never succumbed to such visual cortex artifacts. Plus I remember clearly details of the day such as, my mood, the smell in the air from a nearby waste incinerator plant, the grey skies and the fact I was stone cold sober and straight whilst out shopping for bicycle spares.
2. Some form of projection, using some advanced holographic laser-imaging. Remember this is 1977. Or even a projection from the mind of some supernaturally possessed individual as portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s wonderful 2002 UFO Drama 'Taken' where in the 'dropping the dishes' episode Allie pulls of a mighty work of mass-hallucinogenic projection. And we are talking of UFO's and little grey men as if they are an exotic and supernatural wonder?
3. It was some bizarre hydrogen filled 'Blimp'. Not likely however you look at it and it had gone when I revisited the viewing site probably no more than 5 minutes later.
4. Members of my family, from the future searching for the missing link, me. Keep looking!
   (Just to show that I have a sense of humour about these matters).

Anyway it certainly wasn't a commissioned working version of the BRITISH-RAILWAYS 'sprint- model Flying-Disk the design for which was lodged with the European Patents Office in 1970, since despite it's 'controlled thermonuclear fusion' reactor to be 'ignited by one or more pulsed laser beams' and it's potential anti-gravity simulation, it didn't, not surprisingly get rolled out of the engineering sheds in Sheffield. See the BBC News report on this 2006 discovery.
As far as we know...oooohhhh. "The Flying disk on platform 5, well it ain't goin' nowhere man".

Unfortunately I was only a 19 yr-old at the time & not composed enough of mind (or ready enough) to actually ask any of the many people nearby, in the street if they saw it too. In fact I went into a minor state of shock and slumped off home as I was definitely taken aback by what I had seen! I remember telling a girlfriend from Manchester University dental school about it, when she visited me at home shortly after. I retraced my steps after a few minutes of walking in disbelief but now there was, unfortunately no further sign of the object. I only wish I'd taken my camera with me when I went shopping that morning...! Not something one did with a heavy Russian 'Zenith' SLR.

You will note perhaps, I was the owner of a 'Zenith' SLR camera during both occasions, separated by exactly 20 years yet was not in a position to record my observations.
Not the same camera, but I have found them cheaply 'second-user' when strapped for incentive to splash out loads of cash and still have the second, a 'ZENITH EM' model today.

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