1050

9.35 PM.

Michael Hopkins was returning home to Graigwen, Pontypridd:

"Upon returning home from an evening at a friend's house in Tonteg, I scanned the sky around me prior to opening my front door. As I looked in the direction of Cefn Eglwysilan Mountain [east], I observed a red light making quick darting movements in front of two of the three communication transmitters.

When I first saw the red light, it was darting from approx half way up the left hand transmitter, to a dead stop at the top, then falling vertically back down nearly to the ground, then darting across to the mid point of the middle transmitter, then up to the top, then from a dead stop falling back down to just below the mid point, then across to near the mid point of the left transmitter again, then nearly up to the top to a dead stop, followed by a very sharp turn towards the ground where it disappeared at a lower level that the transmitters.

I had thought it could have been a drone, but why would anyone fly an expensive drone so near to the transmitters in the dark....and for what purpose? The speed of the light and sudden change of direction did not, in my opinion, confirm with the manoeuvring capabilities of a drone. Perhaps I'm wrong.

Approximately ten seconds later, I observed a dull white light to the north west, moving slowly in a north-easterly direction, maybe at an altitude of around 30,000 feet. The strange thing about this light was that it flashed bright white every six seconds. I believe that aircraft strobe lights flash at approx one second intervals.

Later in the night at 23.55 pm I heard the sound of a propeller aircraft, seemingly flying low due the loud droning noise. Going outside I could only see a single flashing red light on an easterly heading. There were no other navigation or strobe lights on the aircraft whatsoever. This aircraft was not visible on Flightradar24.

Th night-time representation photograph of the red light (Image 2), was taken approx 5 minutes after the dull white light sighting. There appears to be a strange white object high in the night sky that I was not aware of at the time. See enlargement, (Image 3)."

Source: SUFON Files: report received from Michael Hopkins 2018.

Images will be added in due course.