When researching a phenomenon about which relatively little is known with certainty, any specific approach might be called into question by researchers who have examined the problems involved from a slightly different angle. The P.S.I. staff is well aware that its choice to expend considerable funds and effort toward 
achieving communication with UFO intelligences might be deemed an unlikely avenue for meaningful returns by some experienced and well-informed researchers. Yet, a major European UFO research group, the Societe Varoise d'Etude des Phenomenes Spatiaux (S.V.E.P.S.) of Toulon, France, and such pioneering UFO researchers in the U.S.A. as Donald Keyhoe, have proposed very specific plans for attempting communication with UFO intelligences. Such plans are based not only upon the natural and very human desire to communicate in a way which elucidates the hitherto unknown, but are conceived upon the basis of reports of specific acts by UFO intelligences - acts which have been interpreted as intelligent responses, even involving UFOs flashing lights in seeming response to light flashes initiated by humans on the ground. The experienced UFO researcher should already be aware of a sufficient number of such cases so as to make their repetition here unnecessary. 

Naturally, the question arises as to why video transmissions via a modulated laser beam are used at the P.S.I. laboratory, instead of, for example, radio frequency transmissions. The answer is a very obvious and simple one. UFOs are frequently reported to disrupt or disturb radio frequency communications. Also, while P.S.I. researchers have been unable to find any reliable evidence that UFOs ever broadcast radio messages (there are apparently no reliable reports of such transmissions being intercepted), in a number of well-witnessed cases UFOs have projected intense, seemingly coherent visible light beams. Such transmissions reportedly have been directed at persons, automobiles, the Earth's surface, and even to other UFOs. There is a likelihood that the reflections of such beams provide various types of data. The reader may recall that Apollo lunar landing vehicles have used laser ranging transmissions while approaching the lunar surface. 

It seems likely that some of the reported UFO laser-type transmissions have been coded or modulated. If that is the case, then at least some UFOs may contain light sensitive receivers with decoding and/or scanner-display mechanisms. Consequently, it may not be unrealistic to hypothesize that video-modulated laser transmissions from the P.S.I. laboratory's UFO/VECTOR unit may be readable by instruments aboard UFOs. As explained in the article titled "UFO/VECTOR: Multi-Purpose Instrument Console" and elsewhere in this issue, there several highly valuable monitoring, recording, and other research functions which the UFO/VECTOR unit can perform even if UFO intelligences will or cannot receive or respond to video-laser transmission. 

Hence, the UFO/VECTOR experiment design was developed because it promises a far greater payoff in terms of UFO-event hard data than would a monitoring and communication system based upon radio frequency transmission. 

As to the priority of installing an automatic recording magnetometer, the abundant evidence of seeming magnetic effects reported in association with UFO events should make the reason for the choice clear to any well-informed UFO researcher. The magnetometer can function to alert the lab staff to the occurrence of anomalistic magnetic effects which may indicate the presence, within a large radius, of a UFO. The device not only triggers other instruments, but records the magnetic effects, along with a calibration tone and Universal Time data. (See "Recording Magnetometer Installed at P.S.I. Lab" elsewhere in this issue.)

Among the other instruments being installed at the P.S.I. laboratory site are exposure-synchronized triangulation cameras located at various places within a quarter-mile radius of the laboratory. An operator at the laboratory building opens the shutter of each camera simultaneously by activating an electronic solenoid system. Each exposure period is recorded as a tone on a magnetic tape, along with Universal Time data from WWV radio.

Two on-site cameras utilize a diffraction grating filter capable of supplying some spectrum data from UFO-related light. As circumstances permit, more sophisticated, instrumented spectrum studies will be conducted.

As this Journal goes to press, a parabolic microphone system with a three-foot diameter dish is being installed at the P.S.I. site. A human operator will manipulate the dish toward the UFO by way of its universal mounting, while listening to the output on headphones. Although UFO sounds are seldom heard if the object is more than several hundred feet away, the parabolic microphone should be capable of picking up sounds of the intensity reported in various UFO cases at distances of several miles. The sounds focused via the dish will be recorded on magnetic tape along with Universal Time data. The parabolic microphone should also serve to enable technicians to clearly distinguish between the reportedly unique UFO type sounds and those produced by jet-and prop-driven aircraft, even when the object being studied is very distant.

The sound recordings obtained can be studied for correlations with magnetometer recordings, gravity effect recordings, photos from triangulation cameras, et cetera, since Universal Time is used in recording all such data.

Within the next year other monitoring and recording instruments will be installed in the P.S.I. laboratory and over the surrounding four hundred acres of isolated hill country.

A few students of UFO phenomena who read this Journal may complain that all the P.S.I. experiment designs seem to presume that UFOs are purely technological and perhaps even extraterrestrial craft. Such objections reflect the theory, which seems to be growing more popular, that UFOs may belong solely to the realm of the psychic ("psi"). The Project Starlight staff acknowledges that some UFO events seem to demonstrate what might be called, for lack of better terminology, a "psi component." In fact, the Association for the Understanding of Man, of which Project Starlight is a research subsidiary, is very much committed to the investigation and study of parapsychological phenomena. However, in any experiment design some working hypotheses must be established. In the case of P.S.I., one working hypothesis is that at least some UFOs are technological devices, the effects of which may be subject to detection, monitoring, and recording. Secondly, it is surmised that the reported technological devices have some form of relatively sophisticated intelligences associated with them. Those intelligences may well be capable of utilizing psi, but because psi is so poorly understood at present, the Project Starlight research philosophy is to concentrate on making measurements, within known parameters, of effects of UFOs or UFO events, such as magnetic effects, sounds, radiation, light emissions, et cetera, rather than to merely discuss possibilities 'on into the night'- stimulating as such possibilities may be.

Thus, the P.S.I. staff has developed and deployed, and will continue to design, produce, and utilize equipment based on the best current knowledge of UFO phenomena. To hesitate to do instrumented UFO research until there are firm answers to many of the important ufological questions may require waiting a very long time. It is believed that many students of UFO phenomena will agree with the approach being taken by Project Starlight. Hopefully, some readers may be able to provide useful ideas to further effective instrumented U FO research.

The pages of the Journal of Instrumented UFO Research are open to material relevant to ufological instrumentation, its development, deployment, standardization, calibration, and the scientific philosophy of its application, from whatever qualified sources it may come.