MADAR CORRELATION  INQUIRY  REPORT
 Multiple Anomaly Detection & Automated Recording
 =============================================================

Special Update: 30 Sept 2022   
Sighting Date:   July 12, 1977
Location:           Mt. Vernon, IL and Mayfield, KY
Source:             Mt. Vernon, IN Police Department 
Subject:            Sightings during MADAR event, July 12, 1977
CMS #:             N/A  

This worksheet is designed to assess the possibility of a correlation with a qualifying potential sighting of interest and a credited MADAR anomaly and involves working with the known sighting date and time in UTC and the immediate state, or sometimes the adjoining state. If that protocol is met, the sighting and node locations will be taken into consideration.

1. INITIAL SOURCE:

July 12th, 1:48 am.  MADAR system at Mt. Vernon, Indiana went into alert mode. Then, just 13 minutes short of three hours later, at 4:35 am, there was a second alert.  Finally, within an hour of the second incident an E-M anomaly took place with lab's smoke alarm.

2.  MADAR DATA

Starting with the first alert, (catalogged as APD 10), the data tape showed no reading of the pulse that triggered the system. The first pulse (known as the "phantom pulse") is not recorded because the data recorder isn't running at that point. Therefore this was a one-pulse disturbance, indicating the cause was at the limit of the sensor's range. The magnet variometer had moved just enough to allow enough light to strike the photo cell, then return back to normal. The background radiation reading was 18 cpm, still normal for the area. There was no visual sighting from the facility. The police department was alerted, but had heard nothing from callers or cruisers at that time.

About three hours later, at 4:35 am, there was a second alert (APD 11), indicating that another geomagnetic anomaly had occurred.  Two hours and 47 minutes after the first alert, MADAR had recorded a 5-pulse, 53-second disturbance. Background radiation, 16 cpm.

3.   SIGHTING INFORMATION

A few days later, the Mt. Vernon Police Department dispatcher, Officer Kermit Steele, advised me that they had picked up transmissions on the police radio from two locations right after I had called him on the 12th! At approximately 2:10 am, 22-minutes after the first alert, citizens had been reporting UFOs to police at Mt. Vernon, Illinois, 62 miles northwest of us! Also, reports were coming in from Mayfield, Kentucky, 91 miles to the southwest! That evening a report came in over the KNI Net (police scanner frequency). Somebody had phoned in a report to the Kentucky State Police at Hancock County. They thought they had seen an aircraft "going down". I contacted the Control Tower at Dress-Regional Airport. No aircraft was ever reported missing or crashed. 

4.   NUFORC DATA CHECK:

A nurforc check for the date in question, along with a check for date prior and date subsequent turned up the following: No data available.
ILLINOIS

BY DATE IN REVERSE ORDER - 85 sightings reported to NUFORC.

7/13/77 22:25	Rock Hill	SC	USA	Circle	2 minutes	UFO followed side by side our car	9/9/22
7/12/77 14:00	St. Petersburg	FL	USA	Disk	2 minutes	Rare sighting of ufo formation shadow on the ground.	10/31/03
7/12/77 04:35	Mt. Vernon	IN	USA			MADAR Event No. 11	4/26/18
7/12/77 02:20	Mayfield	KY	USA			Citizens had been reporting UFOs to police at Mayfield, Kentucky, 91 miles to the SW!((NUFORC Note: Report by Mr. Francis Ridge. PD))	4/26/18
7/12/77 02:10	Mt. Vernon	IL	USA			UFOs reported to police in IL, (62 mi NW of Mt. Vernon, IN) ((NUFORC Note: Report by Francis Ridge, experienced UFO investigator. PD))	4/26/18
7/12/77 01:48	Mt. Vernon	IN	USA			MADAR Event No. 10	4/26/18
7/12/77 01:30	Des Moines	IA	USA	Triangle	3 min	never made a sound	6/12/08
7/12/77 01:30	Hillsborough	CA	USA	Cigar	4to5 sec	Cigar shaped ufo moving at speed of falling star but stoped.	5/15/06
7/10/77 21:00	Clarion	PA	USA	Triangle	5 minutes total	Silent, slow moving black triangle hovering over interstate.	4/13/17

5.   MUFON CMS CHECK:

Also, a CMS check for the date of this sighting included a check for the day prior and the day after and was as follows:

No sightings listed.

6.   PROXIMITY:

Map of region better illustrating the event sites in three states, Illinois, Indiana, & Kentucky.  Mayfield, Kentucky is shown at the bottom center of the page. The map was deliberately rotated slightly counterclockwise to place that location there. Upper left then gets Mt. Vernon, Illinois onscreen and Mt. Vernon, Indiana (the MADAR site) is shown center-top.

Mt. Vernon, Indiana, (top-center) and SW of Evansville is the MADAR site.

MAP BELOW
Mt. Vernon, Illinois is where some of the sightings were reported to Illinois police. We do not know if IP were witnesses to any of these events. This was a period in time where many citizens and truck drivers had CB radios, and many police departments had Citizen Band radios monitoring emergency traffic on channel 9. The reports to police probably came from those sources, plus some land-line calls.

MT. VERNON, ILLINOIS

is about 62 miles as the crow flies NW of Mt. Vernon, Indiana

Mayfield, Kentucky (bottom center) is the location of other UFO sightings reported to local police. Again, we do not have any details or information that law enforcement was also seeing the strange objects being reported.

MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY

is about 91 miles SW of Mt. Vernon, Indiana

7.   COMMENTS: 

Two MADAR alerts occurred in the wee hours of July 12th. Then, within an hour of the last alert, the facility's smoke alarm started beeping. This was not an indication of smoke or fire in the control room, but a automatic system diagnostic notification that the lab's S&F alarm was suddenly showing a LOWBATT. This unit used a radioactive isotope in the tubular battery. When the battery was checked it was found to be in perfect order and was not replaced until six months later! Something had caused the voltage to drop for a very short time. Whatever had caused it was an anomaly in itself.

8.   CONCLUSIONS:

At the time of these incidents the distances (62-91 miles) and Hynek classifications (NL - nocturnal lights) gave them a somewhat low value, yet illustrated that there apparently was UFO activity in the region when MADAR was triggered. Since then, experience, and the findings from Operation Foal Eagle, have suggested that UFOs entering the atmosphere vertically expend considerable energy, then idle down for extended periods. The ETA might have been the reason for the two anomalies recorded at Mt. Vernon, Indiana. We didn't have the internet or cell phones in 1977, nor the means to get investigation reports that might have provided details that could have raised the Hynek values of those reports. There doesn't seem to be any other explanation than UFOs were being detected that early morning of July 12th. Additional evidence to conclude this is based on seven (7) alerts during the 6-week period that summer, culminating in the major event of August 15th, the subject of the next paper.

Fran Ridge
MADAR OPERATIONS CENTER