and the National UFO Reporting Center 
present the
2020  PROJECT  MATCH  REPORT

 
Potential Sightings of Interest & MADAR Anomalies




This report deals exclusively with bonified MADAR anomalies and Potential Sightings of Interest, those that we feel are representative of the UAP phenomena.  There were a number of interesting sightings that either had too distant connections or had no obvious correlations-in-time to be used in this report. There were also cases that were not used because certain data couldn't be confirmed. So this is an effort to show accurate results, many times using Multi-Server Verification.  This report will be subject to updating. Appropriate explanetory links are provided at the end of this summary.  The current INVESTIGATION_STATUS database report showing all these cases and others can be accessed at any time. Finally, any terms used in this report you are not familiar with are explained at the end of this report. - Fran Ridge, MADAR Operations Center.

Updated: 6 June 2024

April 23, 2020; Millerton, Pennsylvania
9:59 pm EDT. Two "ham operators" were watching TV near the "radio room" where the MADAR DataProbe 104 was located when the DAS alarm sounded. The operator immediately went outside while his younger assistant stayed behind attempting to reset the DAS.  A number of dogs down the alley were barking and livestock from a nearby farm located one-quarter mile away were very disturbed and restless. The op immediately noticed to his left, and over a barn to the northwest, a light reddish-yellow object, generally spherical, but fuzzy, possibly due to a clear but low mist condition. Temperature was 29-degrees F. The area was described as rural. Soon the younger member was outside observing as well The object flew between the witnesses and a 50 foot silo that was across from where they stood. The size of the object was estimated at about 20-30' in diameter and the altitude at about 50', range less than a quarter mile. There was no obvious sound from the object. Witnesses attempted to photograph the object, but due to lack of sufficient light or a camera malfunction was not able to do so. Both witnesses stated that they had observed an orange glowing sphere that split in two or was accompanied by another of similar size and color. Objects traveled slowly, less than 10 mph, in a straight line to the northwest and as both objects traveled farther from the witnesses, one object traveled in and out of the other’s flight path, which appeared to be very sequenced until distance traveled led to the inability to be observed any longer and approximately on a 330 degree heading and faded away into the mist.  The total time from the first alert to the end of the visual sighting was estimated at 10 minutes. The MADAR, Node 104, had an alerrt at 9:59 PM. The spreadsheet shows a 6 second anomaly at the beginning of a 186 second period of one-second datalines, The field reading spiked from ambient "status" 0.5 milligaus to 10.5 in two minutes prior to the alert and went into a full "code blue" with  a reading of 20.25 milligaus at 01:58:58 UTC or 9:59 pm. Surprisingly the sighting itself took place over a ten minute period! The onboard compass had deviated over 3 degrees, from 122.62 to 125.82. The magnetometer's field reading varied from 10.5 to 20.25 milligaus and back to 3.0 in those 6 seconds, all of which occurred before the primary witness had gotten outside. The operator contacted MUFON SD and on May 11th the incident was promptly investigated. If site 104's threshold shield had been set higher than 20 (which most MADARs are), the MADAR would not have gone into alertStart and no nomaly would have been detected. And if the site had not been DAS-equipped (alarm) the operators would have only read about it in a alert email, probably the next morning. Several months later we learned about Operation Foal Eagle (South Korea, 2003) where teams had tracked UAPs coming into the atmosphere with a burst of energy, then idled down without any notable readings. This even at Millerton was our first "UFO Signature" in the madar data. One was found later at Fishers, Indiana the previous year but the case had been pending and the data was overlooked until later. Field investigators concluded the Millerton sighting was unexplained.

August 29, 2020; Payson, Illinois
6:30 pm CDT. Two witnesses were sitting in their backyard enjoying the sunset, looking due west. Clear conditions, sun at the horizon, no haze, light northern breeze. Just a few degrees south of the sun, which was sitting on the horizon at about 30 degrees above the horizon, a dim "star" appeared. It remained stationary throughout the entire sighting that lasted about 5 minutes, but it had slowly gotten brighter until it gleamed like the sun reflecting off a jetliner fuselage, an  brighter than any star. The moon would have been visible but it was behind a cloud bank and to the south of the witnesses. The strange lighted object dimmed slowly back to very faint, then it increased in brightness again to the metallic bright gleam for a few moments, and then faded slowly until it was barely visible. Whatever it was, it was highly reflective and its motion created different angles reflecting the bright light of the setting sun. While his wife was looking on the man looked at the Star Chart on his cell phone to confirm the name of the star in that location, but there wasn't supposed to be any. And when he looked up to take another look at the object it was nowhere to be seen and did not reappear.  (Report filed with MUFON). At that time MADAR site 97 at Payson was not DAS-equipped. In August of 2020 only .about 25% of the MADARs had this alarm box. Later, while checking his email, the operator, also the man who had witnessed the strange bright object in the west, found that the MADAR site had an alert at the exact time this was going on!. His alert email read: "A magnetic anomaly has occurred on node: 97 Mag: 186.00, Compass: 84.88, Pressure: 29.12, Time: 2020-8-29, 23:29:33 GMT". The magnetometer reading was unusually high and the MADAR log during the alert documented an MSV (multiple sensor verification) in the compass heading from 82 degrees to 86 degrees. The shield or threshold on the MADAR had been set at 23, 7 milligaus lower than most of the devices at this time of deployment. The magnetometer had been logging readings at status mode of one dataline per minute with magnetometer readings as low as 1.12 milligaus, but right at 23:29:33 UTC (6:29 pm) the readings jumped to alertStart 186 milligaus. So now the device was in alert mode and logging data at a faster rate or one line per second. Originally our analysis showed a 7-second duration, but the spreadsheet has a timing discrepancy and right before the "code blue" alertStart the 1.12 milligaus reading was at 23:29:19, then on the next line jumped to 186 at 23:29:33 a 14-second period. Thirteen seconds was missing. And after the disturbance ended at 23:29:40 UTC, 21 seconds had passed. At that point the readings had died down to 1.5 milligaus. In this analyst's opinion if the node 97 had been DAS-equipped and the alarm panel within earshot, the two events would have been synonymous. As a routine check a Flight Radar 24 loop was attempted in October of 2021 to see flights for that date/time but the sighting was over 365 days old and the data was not available with our version of the software.. This case is rated as an unknown, classified as a Distant Daylight Object.

October 7, 2020; Spencerville, Indiana
7:08 pm EST. The sky had been clear in this rural area, and the man and his son were walking to their barn when his son first saw the object and asked him what it was. It was object was about a 40-degree angle up in the southwest. He pointed at it and they both stood and watched it for 2-3 minutes. When the man then looked down at his son to tell him he didn't know what it was, then back up, the object was gone. The object had been high in the sky, somewhere between 5-10,000 feet, range 1-2 miles, and stationary. It appeared to be about 20-40 feet long, possibly longer, cylinder/cigar-shaped, clearly outlined and silver/chrome reflective. In this case no report had been filed, and there was no alert, so the case was set at pending. However, an FI-4 established the basic facts so that a questionnaire could be completed later. In this case the witness was a new MADAR Op who operated node 81 at Spencerville. When we ran a check on the data for October 7 we found that 7:08 pm EST was 19:08 military time and just after midnight the day AFTER in UTC, or 00:08 UTC. There was no record of a code blue for that site, but we were surprised to find  a spike in the magnetometer readings of 9.75 milligaus at 7:07 pm, 10.5 at 7:09 pm, and 8.25 at 7:10 pm. The three highest readings on the whole page and well-within the time frame with human error. Using the multi-sensor verification protocol we checked the onboard compass heading numbers but that didn't pan since the heading was around 232-233 degrees during those 4 minutes. Our Case Certification Officer then obtained a MADAR questionnaire completed by the primary witness. The investigation seems to confirm that In this instance a chrome-colored cigar-shaped object, described as apparently unidentified and hovering for 2-3 minutes, was witnessed by two persons in good daylight conditions. Site 81 did not go into alert status so at the time no formal report had been filed. When pending sightings came up for review it was discovered that 81's field numbers had spiked very closely with the time estimates. Had the compass readings varied and met the MSV protocols of 3 degrees or more this documented incident would have been even more important. In spite of this we believe that this two-witness event is a good example of a "tic-tac" type object with a right-on MADAR data correlation. It is quite possible that the lack of any dynamic motion would have precluded any significant field readings while the craft was "idling" over Spencerville. It is the opinion of this analyst that had the UAP accelerated out of view the field readings would have possibly been enough to trigger the site's MADAR and MSV would possibly have been met. The same holds true if the craft had entered Indiana airspace with any powered descent measures. One thing was noticed, however, in the data. If 7:08 pm was the documented time of the event, 13 minutes later there was a spike in the magnetometer of 8.62 milligaus. Here the MSV was met when the compass heading changed from 231 to almost 233 then back to 229 in 3 minutes.

October 11, 2020; Millerton, Pennsylvania 
5:58 am EDT. The "ham operators" who run MADAR node 104 were alerted when their DAS alarm sounded at 5:58 am EDT. and they responded according to standard protocol. They immediately went outside the "radio shack" and observed a bright object above the clouds. There was heavy cloud cover that morning and the witnesses thought the object they were seeing above those clouds was actually the moon. Later, the main node op realized that the moon would have been on the other side of the facility in the NW. The initial alert from the witness’s at site 104 registered at 10-11-20 09:58:06 UTC (5:58 AM local time). The alert ended at 10-11-20 09:58:13 UTC (7 seconds later). MADAR Node 82, located in Pine City, NY, 5 miles NE of Millerton, PA, had normal readings at the time of the alert, but at 10-11-20 10:03:18 UTC (5 minutes after the alert in Millerton) had a field reading spike of 11.62 milligaus. This is higher than the normal readings for that node, which normally run in the low single digits, but below the threshold of the alert level, which is set at 25 milligauss. An alert, therefore, was not triggered on the Pine City node, and did not register as such on the MADAR online data page. If there was an object that triggered the alert in Millerton, PA, and that object was traveling NE at 60 mph, it would have reached Pine City in 5 minutes, and could have been the cause of the magnetic spike registered on MADAR Node 82.  MADAR Operations Center confirmed the spike at Pine City of 11.62 milligaus at 6:03 am, and  at significant change in the compass headings, MSV protocols being 3 degrees or more. The field readings from node 104 at Millerton, Pennsylvania at 5:58 am had been high enough to trigger the device and was no doubt a response to an unknown object nearby or even possibly right over the Millerton site. On Oct. 26, a MUFON field investigator conducted the investigation. MUFON Case: 111,788. At 5:53 am, 5 minutes prior to the sighting time, the weather at Elmira Corning Regional Airport, 12 miles to the N, was reported as temperature 56°, winds from the NNE at 12 mph, overcast cloud ceiling at 3,000 feet, and visibility of at least 10 miles. Case Disposition: UAV Object Identification (If Applicable): Unknown. The Stellarium computer program was used to obtain the moon's celestial coords for the date in question and confirmed that the moon was located where the observers had confirmed it to be and not where the anomalous object/light was observed.
 
END OF REPORT

Terms and acronyms used in this report:
nuforc = National UFO Reporting Center at Seattle, Washington
CCO = Case Certification Officer. Used when MUFON is not available.
MADAR dataprobe = official term for MADAR unit.
Operation Foal Eagle