A question for pilots

[Joe E]

Hi,
I am currently researching a documentary of the disappearance of Pilot, Frederick Valentich in 1978. In a nutshell, Valentich was making a flight from Moorabbin, Victoria to King Island, Tasmania in Australia. During the flight he radioed air traffic control and reported he was being followed by a UFO. This was the last time he or his plane were seen or heard from again. He was flying a Cessna 182L light aircraft and had limited flying experience. The time of the flight was around 7pm, so dark.

Valentich disappearance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now, one of the proposed explanations is Valentich became disorientated and
either
1. was flying upside and mistook his own lights for those of a UFO, before crashing into the ocean
2. mistook Venus (which was at its brightest) and possibly a combination of Mercury, Mars and Antares for landing lights before becoming disoriented and crashing.

or another proposed solution:
3. suffered from hypoxia and hallucinated the aircraft.

I would like to get an actual pilot's opinion on the subject. I am wondering, is such as optical illusion possible? Could a pilot mistake his own lights or planets for an aircraft's? What do you guys think happened?

Thank you very much. Any opinions on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

[Homesick-Angel]

There are some unusual reflections that can occur at night particularly on a full moon and that mixed with very thin high cloud you can get what appear to be rings around the moon, and some illusions at different phases of flight to do with a lack of visual cues, but I can't say I've ever thought I was being followed by a UFO...

The flight he was doing wouldn't have been my first choice with minimal experience and if any of the above were happening over calm water, it must have been a fairly spectacular sight.

As for being upside down. I doubt it, or not for long anyway..

Having now read the wiki reports, the young fella sounded like a bit if a struggler flying wise , and being a UFO enthusiast probably gave him the ability to believe his own rubbish..

I'm not sure if you've spent much time on Pprune, but I assume you'll get some far more "entertaining" answers than mine, so Il just go get some popcorn..

[triton140]

There's a fairly extensive discussion on Valentich here.

(Although having just re-read it, there's a fair bit of crap in it, but maybe a coupla bits of useful stuff).

[Frank Arouet]

Men in black coats.

[RatsoreA]

Having read the available material in the national archives, I would suggest staging his own disappearence/suicide would be the most likely cause of his demise. Just my opinion though.

Here would be a good place to start -

Session expired | RecordSearch | National Archives of Australia

EDIT - I just went through the NAA stuff again to quickly refresh my memory, and I forgot, it's broken up into 2 sections, here is the other link -

http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/Searc...0491375&isAv=N

[thunderbird five]

Have a look about halfway down the main page of this site:
Home -
Seems E.T. needed some Cessna spares, or was going to reverse engineer one back on Nebulon 9, so just grabbed the first one to fly by, chucked it on the roof racks of the old saucer and 86'd it out of there, stopping off on the way to check the tie downs.


Case closed.


What was the actual last light time back then in 1978, remembering that last light is mentioned at the ground, not at 4500 feet where reasonable vis would still exist.

[Ultralights]

night VFR, in an area devoid of ground lights, it easy to confuse bright stars with another aircraft! and can make you take evasive manoeuvres if a bright star pops into your field of view. effect is more noticeable on a moonless light..

[fujii]

One thing that always annoys me in the reports is that he radioed Air Traffic Control. As he was was outside controlled airspace, he contacted Flight Service which operated OCTA with no control function.