I´ve always been a defensor of the "imposible maneuvers" of the ufos that you can see on some videos, because you can see a light making bizarre movements, sudden stops, 90º turns,etc.

But after taking a look at this incredible thing ....

What do you think? Put a light on that thing at night, and voilá. Best Ufo ever. At least at very low altitude.

Sorry for my english.

I hired a guy three or four years ago who flew RC helicopters; he can do some of those maneuvers. Those little guys have such a high thrust-to-weight ratio that they can do that.

I think your scenario is plausible, although I don't know how many actual sightngs would be explained by it. People think they would hear the motor, or see that it's nearby. It turns out that things don't have to be very far away from you before you stop hearing them and stop recognizing them as nearby. Sighting a model in daylight would also be misleading because the object looks like a helicopter, only smaller. So it would mis-cue the viewer to its actual distance.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Wow. Makes me wonder how many "crash dollars" he must've invested to get to that skill level. I used to fly RC planes and got pretty good. I decided to buy my first helicopter, thinking I'd be an instant ace.

Wrong.

The guy at the hobby shop told me flying an RC helicopter is like trying to balance a steel ball on the edge of a knife while riding a bicycle blindfolded. After trying without success for a solid week to perform a simple takeoff, hover, and landing, it finally sunk in that he was right.

My parents were none too happy either, after they saw the multiple rings of dead grass on the front lawn from the rotor blade vortices during my numerous liftoff attempts. I discovered grass doesn't respond well to exhaust from a 2-stroke engine that runs on nitromethane.

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Apollo unbelievers go here for immediate salvation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khDI2MsWSYc

"I had a hand in Tom Morrow's kiester."
-JayUtah

"The only physical proof nasa has that they landed men on the moon is 840 lbs. of rocks"
-straydog02

Not to mention that RC Helos are much more expensive than RC planes.....

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Yep. Every piece that flies off at impact costs more, and there are more of em.

__________________
Apollo unbelievers go here for immediate salvation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khDI2MsWSYc

"I had a hand in Tom Morrow's kiester."
-JayUtah

"The only physical proof nasa has that they landed men on the moon is 840 lbs. of rocks"
-straydog02

Tut tut!! Following this thread I am amused by tales of woe by the RC PILOTS OF THE PAST here!

THE RC PILOT OF THE FUTURE, (I am one, having mastered fixed wing areobatics this way.) MASTER RC FLIGHT IN ALL FORMS ,,,,FIXED WING/ HELOCOPTERS, ACTUAL JET TURBINE POWER, SAILPLANES ECT

THE MODERN WAY, ON THEIR PC'S USING MODERN RC SIMULATORS SUCH AS THS, ZIP! ZIP! ZIP!! THE MODERN WAY!!
http://www.realflight.com/index.html

The Great Planes (there are several other brands) RealFlight rc aircraft simulator...PS...check in the yellow pages for your local hobby shop that specializes in RC aircraft...many of them have Real Flight demo kiosks (like they have for xbox, ps2/3 video games ect) that allow you to loiter and play on one for free...the graphics, physics and overall reality are astounding!

PSS So as not to be banned..I beg the moderator's indulgence with this explaination ...I refer to the classic (IMHO best ever) episode of the original
'Honeymooners' on tv episode titled 'Better living through television', in which
Ralph enlists Ed in yet another of his disasterous strike it rich scheme...doing a live tv commercial to sell Ralph's warehouse full of the 'helpfull housewife happy handy's kitchen utensils..Norton plays THE CHEF OF THE PAST, and Ralph plays THE CHEF OF THE FUTURE,HA HA!! ZIP ZIP! ITS ZIPPING THE MODERN WAY,HA HA!! Another proof of a better life through television,HaHa!!

On the serious side of this topic:

AFIK very little RC helicopter pilots do very much flying in darkness dark enough to require festooning lights (bright leds ect) on their craft..
There is a simple reason for this...go to any local rc flying field and you will notice most rc helicopter flying is done much closer in to the pilot than fixed wing aircraft at the field for the obvious reason even the largest rc helicopters are considerably smaller in size than even the most common sized rc planes (rc planes most popular sized wingspans 5ft or more, and fuselages at 4 feet or so and longer)...hence while the rc planes of this size are still easily visible in daytime enough at several hundred yards distant horizontialy and verticaly not so the helicopters..even more importantly even in day again obviously the planes due to the large surface area of the wings and fuselages even at distance make it easy to determine the model's atitude and direction in flight..not so rc helicopters with their invisible at distance rotors and likewise relativly small fuselage areas..

My point is that AFIK you just can't hang leds on the rotors for the obvious areodynamic and balance difficulties, and with their short fuselages even lights on them would quickly diminish in perspective and more than a couple hundred feet rendering them useless for determining direction , atitude ect of the craft necessary obviously to avoid crashing..

In fact AFIK even amongst rc planes of the larger 'giant scale' ..defined as 1/4 scale or larger (typicaly wingspanes of 7 feet to larger than 10 feet) night flying of these is probably less than 5% of total flying of these size and class aircraft..

Not to say it can't be done or has not been done..FWIW

incredible manuevers! Seems unreal!

Well, it's over-reaching to say that because RC copters CAN be flown in such strange maneuvers that this is what UFO sightings are. But it is safe to say that they COULD be done with a skilled RC pilot. And to take that a step further, one could say if they could be done in this manner, what other ways are out there to produce "UFO" sightings?

although I think the majority of the "sightings" are rare but natural phenomenon (how the heck do you pluralize that? Gillian help!) that the observer(s) just aren't familiar with. And a good many are common things (birds, airplanes, etc) that people just see from odd vantage points. Anything in the sky is hard to identify; you generally have little or nothing to use as a reference.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"A long time ago, yet somehow in the future"

"Phenomena," Fazor. Thanks for caring; so few people do. But "phenomenons" looks and sounds funny.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I just couldn't figure it out; thought it was something like that (although I probably woulda ended in 'ae' or something) but also thought it might be the whole "i saw a deer yesterday, but today i saw ten deer" thing. Thanks for saving me the trip to dictionary.com

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"A long time ago, yet somehow in the future"

I don't see why you couldn't hang led's on rc rotors, as long as the rotors are balanced. Anyone have any better knowledge of this?

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

I was thinking about RC helicoptes when i saw this...

When will I learn to first google before posting?

This company offers lighting kits for RC night helicopter flying..
http://www.glowire.com/RCHELICOPTERS.htm

I hope I did not violate the rules by just pasting in that direct link..If so and that link is deleted..then mere go to this company

glowire.com and look for rc helicopter kits from the menu on the home page..

thanks for your patience with me!
regards

Notice the great distance from the camera of the object...unless I am mistaken that would need to be a VERY large rc helicopter indeed.

I don't see anything wrong with that link

BTW, perspective can be a tricky thing - I love this snopes.com page:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/closedhl.asp

The planes are no closer than 2 miles to each other, but look like they're missing each other by feet...

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

How would one get the juice to the LEDs? Rotor-mounted batteries would be one way, but we're talking about additional weight in a very sensitive area.

One old-fashioned method would be to use sparklers.

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Run the wires inside the blades? Besides, if you're going to go through all the trouble of faking an ETV with an RC helicopter, go all out and do a custom body. Maybe one with an over/under dual main rotor and no tail to give it a disc shape. Mount the motor between the rotors with the body around that:

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Launch and retreive with a big pair of tongs, or give it a huge wire frame landing gear that extends past the rotors, and you're all set.

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

Actually, it looks like a very small object to me; at one point it goes behind (what appears to be) a tree, and the size can be estimated roughly. It seems to be less than a meter in diameter, perhaps much less.
Here are two frames from the film, before and after it goes behind the tree; the tree looks to be no more than three or four metres wide, and the light passes behind the tree but in front of some small houses or shops.

Images here

Such a light could be attached to a small, radio-controlled helicopter or similar; it certainly isn't a large, distant object.

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I suspect you're right. It could even be an RC plane. Flying toward the camera from a good distance away would make it appear to hover.

Whatever it is, it's small. At around 1:22 you see some guys stand