Meet Pastor Ric D.T. Wilson.LFIBA.

Ric has an amazing tale to tell. To begin with, Ric was nominated for ‘Victorian of the year’ in 1991 and was awarded a Victorian Achievers Award for encouraging and promoting Water Safety. He has had other awards, and he authored the book ‘ The S Files, open jaws, closed minds’. There was much media involvement, but these days he has been given a ‘D’ notice by the bureaucrats.

Ric has a very responsible attitude towards air safety and towards demonstrating a ‘Duty of Care’ towards others, which is a phrase he uses quite often.

Ric is an experienced pilot, and he operates a Hangar base and office at Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne. He is involved as a Pastor in backing up airport workers and pilots and provides much assistance in various ways. He has been an aviation consultant for VUFORS for about 7 years, and this came about because of his caring attitude. He noticed an octogenarian who was asking pilots about their UFO sightings around the Victorian Aero club, and decided to help out. He offered Paul B Norman office space in a part of the hangar as a result, and Paul still uses it to this day as his office, even at age 90.

Ric runs a ‘shark spotting’ service throughout the year, and has on many occasions reported large menacing sharks lurking perilously close to swimmers. He knows that we even get Great Whites in both Port Phillip and Westernport Bays. The largest was over 7 metres long.

There are other dangers that are often observed from the air.

As a missing persons researcher, his theory about sharks being responsible for more losses than suggested is controversial. Body parts washing up or recovered have often displayed the signs of shark interaction. Ric was a part of a Victoria Police Task Force Investigation into this situation but when Kennett went out of office the outcome of all this was stonewalled.

The main problem is that the authorities don’t want Ric to make such reports.

It is all about protecting tourism and conservation agendas. To make things worse, the people who are supposed to be interested in taking such reports seriously are not so interested in taking the reports or acting on them.

Ric has been denied membership to water safety organizations.

The same goes for bush fires. In fact, the official NOTAM to pilots makes it clear that it’s illegal for civilian pilots to report bushfires ! Go figure? Why would this be the case? Apparently even Dick Smith , who wrote to Ric has commented that the NOTAM was a “total overkill”.

This problem was highlighted by Ric in the ‘Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’ magazine Nov/dec 2006and also in letters to the Herald Sun letters section 11/11/2006.

The situation was that some pilots actually saw CFA personel LIGHTING fires on days of Total Fire Ban and days of high fire danger. So now pilots are not allowed to make reports of such activity. They have to just ignore it and fly on! The same applies to coastal abnormalities and pilot guides now have vital phone numbers DELETED!

At one stage Ric used his mobile phone to contact 000 operators in order to report a serious matter, and they hung up on him, because they didn’t believe him when he said he was phoning them while flying a plane!

Sometimes mobile phones cut out in flight or operators put you on a long hold – never to respond. He has also been denied access to important marine safety radio frequencies!

Isn’t this just typical! Here is a person with both the intelligence and the responsibility to report dangerous situations from the air, and he is being told to remain silent.

On one occasion when Ric found a capsized vessel out at sea and reported it, he was told to move on. He refused, preferring to keep an eye on it until help arrived an hour later!. Ric was concerned that the vessel could drift quite a distance from it’s known location before help arrived, and therefore be difficult to find. He had to argue with the authorities to be allowed to keep circling nearby until he was sure the help had arrived.

Just imagine if he saw a UFO while flying. Just imagine.

Well, it just so happens that Ric has seen UFO’s on several occasions recently, over Victoria, and has even sent in reports to the local UFO society in Victoria…but still the reports have been ignored.

It’s not Ric’s fault however, because VUFORS is in crisis at present. Their president and a couple of their office bearers have retired or stood down. It’s always difficult to find replacements.

Meanwhile, at a few of my AUFORN VIC meetings this year, some VUFORS people have complained to me that they have still not received their club newsletter from December 2005!

Time will tell if it ever arrives, or if VUFORS survives this crisis.

Ric also passed on to me a report from the NARCAP website, which presents a real pressing air safety concern regarding …AIRCRAFT HAVING MID-AIR COLLISIONS WITH UFOs. NARCAP is the organization started by Dr Richard Haines, ex NASA scientific consultant.

This report from 2002 tells of a commercial cargo plane that hit something not long after take off. The collision was so great that the pilot was killed instantly, and the planes engine BROKE in two!

Further to this, there were transfer marks from the collision, found on the plane, that consisted of an ‘unknown’ red substance, which was analyzed and found to consist of some type of polymer substance. The report should still be on the NARCAP website.

Here is a small part of the report…

“On October 23, 2002, at 1945, central daylight time, a Cessna 208B, N76U, call sign Night Ship 282, registered to Atlantic Aero, Inc., and operated by Mid Atlantic Freight, Inc. collided in-flight with an unknown object at 3,000 feet MSL and descended uncontrolled into swampy water in the Big Bateau Bay in Spanish Fort, Alabama, shortly after takeoff from the Mobile Downtown Airport, in Mobile, Alabama. The cargo flight was operated under the provisions of Title 14 CFR Part 135, and instrument flight rules. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed and an IFR flight plan was filed. The commercial pilot sustained fatal injuries and the airplane was destroyed. The flight originated from the Mobile Downtown Airport, in Mobile, Alabama on October 23, 2002 at 1940”.

And “The recovered wreckage was then transported to Atlanta Air Recovery, Griffin, Georgia and examined again on November 19, 2002 through November 21, 2002. The engine was broken into two sections and separated from the airframe. Red transfer marks were observed on many pieces of the airframe, concentrated on the lower airframe skin forward of the main landing gear and the nose landing gear area. The left side of the cargo pod was impact damaged. There was no evidence of fire, and the origin of the red transfer marks has not been identified.”

 

According to Ric, the public has a right to know that this sort of thing happens, and he keeps asking the safety authorities what they are doing about it…but he gets no answers. He keeps getting ‘stonewalled’. So much for Air Safety. But what can you do.

It’s very frustrating for people like Ric who actually demonstrate that they have a “Duty Of Care”.

It’s also disturbing for the rest of us when we realize that the people we rely on , or expect to act with alacrity, are often reluctant to take responsible action. To show the system that Ric has no conflict of interest and despite massive persecution over the years he struggles to use his own resources to keep all the work going on a voluntary basis. He has been denied Grants , Sponsorships and any kind of strategy to be included. He works ‘around’ the system with a network of established contacts that can deal with some of his ‘frontline’ intelligence. This is a “smack in the face” to those who keep hiding the truth. And finally, having overcome cancer and the devastating break up of his first marriage due to his involvements and having the government close down his insurance agency after 19 years- he is still standing.

Many audits and run-ins with bureaucrats later he is still “at it” and may just emerge vindicated one day soon.

For the sake of air safety, water safety and fire danger, lets hope so.

Cheers…