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object with green lights that accompanied the airplane during its last minutes remains even more of a mystery. [5] About two months later, a remarkable aerial sighting was About months About two months later, a remarkable aerial sighting was documented over New Zealand. Captain Bill Startup, a senior pilot working for Safe Air Ltd. with twenty-three years of experience and 14,000 hours of flying time, and his copilot Robert Guard, with 7,000 hours of flying time, were key witnesses. The Argosy freight plane they piloted was making a newspaper delivery between Wellington and Christchurch off the Kaikoura coast of South Island. Australian television aerial two was reporter Quentin Fogarty from Channel O in Melbourne, Australia, his cameraman David Crockett, and sound operator Ngaire Crockett were also on board, because UAP had been witnessed by aircrews and picked up by radar about ten days earlier along the same route. Fogarty was making a television documentary about these earlier events, partly because of heightened interest in UFOs after the Valentich disappearance. He wanted background footage for his documentary, so he joined the newspaper delivery on December 30-31,1978, for this purpose. He never expected to witness any strange phenomena himself. But just after midnight on that flight, a series of light phenomena appeared, escorted the aircraft, and flew around it. Captain Startup and copilot Guard, who were well aware of the regular, very familiar lights along the coast, were the first to notice the strange lights ahead of them. For about thirty minutes, cameraman Crockett captured the luminous 1 som aan objects on 16 mm color movie film, while Fogarty commented on camera, as the events unfolded. At the same time, on-board systems and air traffic control in Wellington, New Zealand, tracked the objects on radar while they were viewed by Captain Startup and others aboard. The radar readings were reported to the pilots by air traffic controller Geoffrey Causer, and witnessed on the scope also by radar maintenance technician Bryan Chalmers. Causer remained in constant communication with the pilots a 1 fe) 4 . a4 a4 164 throughout the incident, and the entire dialogue was recorded on tape. I have viewed the film of these unusual images-showing bright lights in and out of focus, some round, some suggestive of a disc shape—which has also been carefully analyzed by others. The lights disappeared and reappeared in totally new locations, sometimes several at a time. Their behavior cannot be explained by normal aerophysics. At one point, witnesses in the plane observed lights flying in formation with the aircraft. They then heard from air traffic control that the phenomenon was so close to the plane that the radar scope could not separate the two. Causer registered only one signal on the radar screen, but it was twice as big as it had been before. "There's a strong target right in formation with you. Could be right or left. Your target has doubled in size," he reported. Chalmers also viewed the double-size target. It appeared as if two planes were flying at the same speed so close to each other that they were indistinguishable on radar. Such proximity could of course be a