Volume 3 is coming to fruition at last !

A visit to the Publisher

We went to see our publisher and now very good friend Jon Downes andhis delightful wife Corrina.

On this occasion my daughter Vicky andher husband Steve (and Abbey) came down and stayed in our caravan which is stored a mile or so away. As it was only a two berth Dawn and I mastered the delights of putting up a tent, which was easy enough after we fathomed out we should have put the outside one up first! The weather of course turned drastically from a heat wave on the Thursday to gale force winds and heavy rain, the day after. Next to the camp site was a charming horse and her baby foal.......

Volume 3 which covers a mind boggling period of only two years is nearly finished. At the moment we are putting the finishing sighting touches to the Index and checking the book for the last time, before we go back down to Jon’s hopefully in a couple of weeks.

I spoke to Phil Mantle today after hearing that he had resigned from his position of Editor of Matrix, due to health reasons, and wished him the very best. If there was such a thing as a gold medal awarded to people in this line of work for their commitment to the UFO cause Phil should get a chestful! He has been very helpfulto us and has always given good advice when asked. We are sorry to see him go but will remain friends.

Email from Phil.................

Dear friends and colleagues,

This is just a quick note to inform you that as of today July 14th, I
have resigned as editor of UFO MATRIX magazine. I don't want to go into
the reasons behind this at this moment in time but I will provide
further details in due course to those that are interested.

I would like to thank everyone for their kind support over this last 12
months and for the many kind comments concerning the great quality of
UFO MATRIX magazine. It has been a pleasure working on it and I am proud
to say I was its editor, but all good things must come to an end
unfortunately. I would like to thank all of our colunists and
contributors for making the magazine a first class publication. Without
them it would simply not have been possible.

My interest in the UFO subject continues and health permitting I will
still be involved as much as I can in this enigmatic subject. I have
several long term writing plans in the pipeline which I am looking
forward to a great deal.


Yours sincerely,Philip Mantle.

From friend Ellie.............

AURORAS UNDERFOOT: Flying the last mission of NASA's 30-year shuttle program, the crew of Atlantis has witnessed a beautiful display of auroras from Earth orbit--and there might be more in the offing. Visit http://spaceweather.com for photos and the geomagnetic forecast.

From friend Don in Bexleyheath.......

Well im being woken up at anything from 5am onwards by the constant squeaking from our two latest hatchlings wanting feeds from one of the parents . Both are up on their little legs now and coming out for walkabouts - all be it short one's , but poor Aphrodite doesn't know what to do as one or both hatchlings go to HER for food so she tries to get away from them which is so funny to watch , as if you imagine the Benny Hill music it look extremely comical as the 3 of them go around the cage together , but little Asbo who was our first chick born is so good and he WILL oblige and allow the chicks to thrust their beaks into his mouth and have a feed , but enjoy the accompanying clip taken today .

Best Wishes Don

Ring of lights over Cambridgeshire

Jennie Archibald was driving towards Swaffham Prior just outside Cambridge with her sister at 11.30pm 18^th of May 2001, when they saw a ring of lights about half the size of a football with smaller lights in the middle, just above cloud cover .

The couple stopped the car to obtain a closer look; each time they did this the ring of lights seemed to disappear from view. After reaching the outskirts of Cambridge it was gone.

Another sighting of a pair of mysterious ‘Lights in the sky ‘occurred just after10pm 30th of May 2001 involving Simon Sutcliffe who was out night fishing near Hever Kent, when he saw,”Two bright lights towards the direction of the village of Hartfield, close to Ashdown Forest, one was higher than the other, they seemed to disappear when a plane flew past, one of many using the flight path into Gatwick. I decided to make my way home but was surprised to see them in the sky about 2-3miles away and stopped the car. All of a sudden they just vanished from view’” (Source: Chris Rolfe/UFOMEK)

In May 2001 a silver ‘disc’ was seen stationary in the sky over the M5 Motorway near the West Bromwich turn off by a member of the UFORM group. A short time afterwardsA large passenger Jet was seen flying low over Sandwell Valley followed by the arrival of two RAF jets seen heading at speed along the previous course taken by the UFO(Source: Steven Poole)

Triangular UFO Staffordshire

A black triangular object was seen in the sky NNE over Codsall Staffordshire close to Wolverhampton West Midlands at an angle of 40-50degress elevation at 1pm 12th of June 2001 by local housewife Mrs Nuttall who called her husband Lee to come and have a look, but by then it had disappeared out of view obscured by a large oak tree.

“Within a few minutes or less it reappeared and we were both able to watch it, initially with the naked eye and then using 10 x 50 binoculars. It was a fine summer day, with very little cloud and at no time was my vision of the object obscured by anything other than the oak tree in our garden. Once in view, it stayed in view until it was too far away to be seen even using 10 x 50 binoculars.

The object had seemed to appear suddenly in the sky above the roofs of houses fronting a main road some 200 yards away and then disappeared from sight, obscured by the large oak tree in our garden. Within a minute or so we were both able to see it, this time at an elevation of about 70o as it climbed above the oak tree, now slightly west of NNE. I estimate it was between 200 to 300 yards away when first seen, with the object itself measuring between ten to fifteen feet wide. It was black in colour and showed no lights It appeared to be “tumbling” or “rocking”.

More precisely, it was rotating through as much as 70o about its longitudinal axis (if it was a conventional aircraft, its wings would tip up 35o on one side then up 35o on the other side in a rapid and rhythmic regular way.

It was not, however, pitching and tossing (going up and down at the nose end). The object was also moving in a steady upward spiral, pretty much as though it was a bird in a thermal. However, the object was rigid, triangular with rounded points, very thin in sideways view and dull black.

Through 10 x 50 binoculars, one edge seemed to have a yellow flare. The flare was unlikely to be chromatic aberration (flare is not observed when using these binoculars to look at other “normal” objects such as high-flying aircraft, micro-lite or hot-air balloons) but neither did it look as though it was a definite part of the object's colouring. It did not seem to be an emanation associated with propulsive energy.

t looked like a diffused or out of focus yellow stripe along one edge of the triangle. Apart from the yellow “flare”, there were no distinguishing features. The object continued to spiral and climb in height until it could no longer be seen with the naked eye.

The object always presented the same size and form, depending on its position relative to the viewpoint. It continuously seemed to move with a circular motion about a relatively tight, small radius, and kept presenting a different angle of view so that the impression gained was that it was "tumbling". This may have been an optical illusion due to the differences in aspect ratio as it moved.”

Lee believes what he saw was definitely a man-made aerofoil of some kind possibly an unmanned remote-controlled reconnaissance craft that had temporarily lost the ability to control its performance, apparently unstable and out-of-control to some extent.

However, once it achieved a safe altitude, and out of visual rang it was seen to fly slowly in a straight line. The yellow line on its rear edge suggested it could be man-made and possibly a prototype testing new flight technology”.

The couple contacted the news desk at the Wolverhampton Express & Star to see if anyone else had seen it but they had had no reports and were not interested in taking any details, from them.

Nine bright orange UFOS were seen to arrive in the airspace over Yeovil Somerset one by one before commencing a dazzling display of aerobatics during the evening of the 28^th of June 201.It was said that these objects were similar to what was witnessed over Fleetwood Lancashire (Source :UFO Magazine Graham Birdsall)