1978 FAB UFO Records

The bulletin reproduces what its editors call a verbatim Department of Transport transcript of Cessna 182L pilot Fred Valentich's final six minutes of radio traffic with Melbourne Flight Service on October 21, 1978, beginning at 7:06:14 PM and ending at 7:12:28 PM with 17 seconds of open-microphone metallic noise. It catalogs the four-day, 7,000-square-mile RAAF search by eight aircraft over 70 flight hours, the oil slick 18 miles north of King Island that the Defense Department's Maribyrnong materials lab identified as marine diesel rather than Cessna fuel, and the absence of wreckage, life jackets, or distress-beacon signal. Editor J. Allen Hynek opens the issue with a letter to OMNI magazine disavowing fourteen photographs in its April 1979 First Encounter feature, of which he says only three may be genuine UFO images. The Valentich section then lays out four competing premises (spatial disorientation, lighthouse-glare circling, UFO involvement, hoax) with arguments on both sides drawn from named instructors, controllers, and family members.