Link to released declassified UK UFO files

[Mogwa]

They're available here:

http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

This is a large, multi-part download. Hope it's worth all the work needed to go through them.

[Artyom]

I'm reading these files now and man, it's not easy to understand blurred scans which were made from original documents. I realize that perhaps it's the fastest way to digitize them but I wouldn't mind to have actual searchable PDF files rather then scans. But for sure it's better then nothing:-)

[Artyom]

8 files, more than 1,000 PDF pages of....police reports, control tower personal technical reports, air force reports and the only conclusion I can draw from all this material is that UK government officially acknowledge that UFO phenomena is real and that's all, in a way these materials aren't better than UFO photos in terms of lighting some light on the problem and giving some sort of an explanation. Sad. This is like 'folks, you wanted us to acknowledge the fact? Ok we acknowledge but that's it.'

[Artyom]

8 files, more than 1,000 PDF pages of....police reports, control tower personal technical reports, air force reports and the only conclusion I can draw from all this material is that UK government officially acknowledge that UFO phenomena is real and that's all, in a way these materials aren't better than UFO photos in terms of lighting some light on the problem and giving some sort of an explanation. Sad. This is like 'folks, you wanted us to acknowledge the fact? Ok we acknowledge but that's it.'

[schticknz]

It took me a couple of days, downloading a few at a time, to get them all downloaded. I think I mentioned it when they came out that one PDF has something like 400 pages to it!

So now I'm trying to figure out the best way of dealing with such a large amount of quite difficult to read (Artyom, as you say) material.

Think I may be putting them onto DVD (I certainly don't want to download them again) and then go from there. It may be a case of taking one PDF or page at a time, printing it, and slowly try to make sense of each scribble (boy these MOD guys have terrible writing :P) and then typing it into MS WORD (TM* ).

I may be an old man before I get through it all, though. However, a thought just came to me ... this could be a job for distributed computer thingy ... like Project Gutenberg. Get loads of people all over the world to go through the PDFs bit by bit ... et voila ... all done in no time

schtick thinking that he may be going through a helluva lot of paper and causing mass deforestation of epic proportions

*TM, of course, = "Total Muppet

[7 String]

I was reading those last week and wow,,,, one a long read. I'm going to keep going and hope to find something really cool. We should post links or directions on any cool cases here on the forum.

~A

[Artyom]

Originally Posted by 7 String

We should post links or directions on any cool cases here on the forum.
~A

I guess a document name and page number will be enough. Just make sure you have enough coffee to do not fall asleep as reading pretty much the same police reports can put in a sleep real quick

[7 String]

Originally Posted by Artyom

I guess a document name and page number will be enough. Just make sure you have enough coffee to do not fall asleep as reading pretty much the same police reports can put in a sleep real quick

Yeah that will work. Now hopefully if its a little jem it will actually read better and not be a sleepy read.

~A

[Artyom]

Perhaps - DEFE 24-1923.pdf, page#183 ?

[Artyom]

Originally Posted by schticknz

So now I'm trying to figure out the best way of dealing with such a large amount of quite difficult to read (Artyom, as you say) material.

Well, actually there is a way to make these documents searchable and readable. There is a great image recognition software - http://finereader.abbyy.com/?, this software is capable to convert text presented as graphical file to text, which you can save as MS word doc or then convert back to readable PDF file. I used to use this software a lot back at the time when I studied at the university. Of course this program has its limitations such is its recognition ability depends on graphical file quality, if we are talking about blurred image you'll need to teach the software to recognize blurred letters but then it'll able to recognize the rest part of a text automatically. So the bottom line is you need - spend some $$$, time, a wish to study this software which is easy to use and of course a will to dig into this work:-)