The British UFO hoax - what was the point?

A programme on Channel 4 in 2003 (`A Very British UFO Hoax) caused a major stir in the UKcountryside. At the start of the programme psychologist Chris French mentioned that people whoreport UFO's often see them in imperfect light. He also spoke about people exaggerating, adding towhat they saw and seeing slightly different things. So presumably the project was designed to showhow UFO sightings can be explained away as common objects.Yet the project involved a group of cinema special effects experts, ballooning experts and modelmakers who used the latest specialists equipment to create a `hoax UFO'. After the UFOsuccessfully flew over the countryside, causing people to report what they had seen, the narratorannounced that people had been `fooled' into thinking that they'd seen a UFO. This was a strangechoice of words, as people had not been fooled at all. They actually

had

seen a UFO - anunidentified flying object!If the object of the hoax was to provide evidence that eye witnesses exaggerate and add things towhat they see, this was of limited success; there were certainly a few discrepancy in the reports.One man believed he saw other discs through binoculars and someone else saw what she thoughtwere `lights' on the side of the model (which could have been the reflection of the sun). Butotherwise people reported quite accurately what they saw, adding nothing outrageous. In particularthey all reported the actual sound the model made and the way it moved across the sky. There wereno alien figures or outlandish abductions and nobody said that they saw the craft zoom away atsupersonic speed or change direction the way UFO's are supposed to. Of course, most eye-witnesseshad definite ideas as to where the disc came from (they speculated that it was of alien origin).But if the point of the hoax was to show how all UFO sightings could be explained away asmisinterpretations of normal objects such as weather balloons etc. why the special effects expertswith all the latest equipment and gadgetry - including US military-style engines - and presumablycivil aviation authority's permission to fly their models around the countryside?It was quite amusing to see crack pilots using the latest remote-control technology struggling tocontrol the craft, which took three months to construct. One wonders why the research team didn'tcome up with a less expensive method using the common objects that presumably eye-witnessesusually mistake for UFOs. All that time, specialist knowledge and money couldn't' even make acraft that behaved like a typical UFO sighting - zooming around changing direction instantly.