Leer en español

2003/10/17 (EN)

Latest Count

The latest count of FOTOCAT shows near 4,000 entries. Considering an estimate of 10,000 of the total number of photographic cases world-wide between 1947 and 2003, it shows the big progress accomplished to date.

Outstanding Donation

An important donation has just taken place by Dr. Roberto Enrique Banchs, one of the leading, historical figures of UFO research in Argentina. Dr. Banchs has submitted to the FOTOCAT Project his personal collection of photographs, amounting to some hundreds of prints and slides, which will certainly enrich our archives. This material will surely complement our documentation files, mainly for Argentina.

Fotocat´s Structure Changes

The FOTOCAT Excel listing is evolving once more. The last version has included the decision to be in English, because most of potential users are English-speaking. Also, new columns have been added to include: names of photographers, media associated to them, special features of photographs or photography conditions (infrared or other sensibility film used, stereo o 3D, automatic cameras, gun or satellite cameras, object invisible to eye, blank photos, spectra or magnetic recording, etc). Besides new columns to enter geographical codes for US States and Spanish provinces. This improvement will allow the researchers to tabulate the event listing with larger flexibility.

Recent International Co-Operation

Brad Sparks, a noted US researcher has provided us with a copy of his “Comprehensive Catalog of 1,500 Blue Book Unknowns: Work in Progress”, June 18, 2003 version. 24 photographic or film cases are included and although only 2 reports were new to FOTOCAT, a number of interesting details and references have been added to the actual documentation.

From Argentina, experienced UFO student Luis Eduardo Pacheco is a frequent collaborator who remits us WWW´s url references where UFO photos are depicted.

Michael Strainic, MUFON´s Western Regional Director for Canada, is reviewing the FOTOCAT records for his country and extensively checking those against his own archives, which will finally produce an accurate index of the UFO photo-phenomenology in Canada.

We thank veteran ufologist Ignacio Darnaude Rojas-Marcos from Seville (Spain) for providing us with a set of mystery photographs from his archives.

The Spanish (Catalonian) Joan Plana Crivillén has been an outstanding investigator specialising in Defense and military issues. Now he is retired from front ufology and he has donated us a batch of first-generation photographs of UFO cases he had in his files.

Another ufologist from Argentina, Luis Burgos, founder of the Fundación Argentina de Ovnilogía, is proceeding with a comprehensive survey of books and journals to prepare a list of all UFO photographic events in his country. Given the number and the task, Luis is sending the information in instalments, and it is duly entered into FOTOCAT records. In the process, many new cases to us are surfacing.

Co-Operation Needed: An Offer

The assistance of both national and foreign researchers is requested. I offer to submit provincial (Spain) or national (foreign countries) listings of the present content of FOTOCAT to those students interested in reviewing local cases. The aim is to correct the input and to add information to it. At the end, the benefit will be mutual. Those interested can write to FOTOCAT Project at ballesterolmos@yahoo.es