Weekend Fun: Homemade UFO Hijinx
Linn Murphy, a 51-year-old fella from Irvine California, knows how to have a good time at the expense of his neighbors in Orange County. Murphy flies a remote controlled UFO over night baseball games, beaches, parks, traffic jams and other public events at night to cause a sensation. According to police, Murphy has generated hundreds, if not thousands, of calls to 911.
Murphy’s flights of fancy have also yielded dozens of videos to be published on UFO Web sites, as authentic sightings. But Murphy didn’t actually build his UFO plane himself, he bought it on the Internet!
The inventor, Steve Zingali, stumbled upon the idea when he was troubleshooting a problem he was having with his radio-controlled plane. He turned to the web for advice, and after a few random links, he discovered another enthusiast’s hand-drawn planes for a UFO plane on a forum. The poster, who dubbed himself, Stringfly ignited Zingali’s imagination.
Zingali, another California resident (What’s in the water out there?? —Ed.) with a sense of adventure, decided to build the plane even though several engineers told him “it wouldn’t fly,” since there was “no airfoil, no lift, no dihedral.”
The plane did fly, but needed some tweaking for stability and handling sudden bursts of wind. The larger version worked well enough for Orange County to erupt in UFO reports and cause “motorists to chase strange lights in the sky.”
The best part about this story is that the police in Orange County are enjoying the fun as much as Murphy and Zingali. Lt. Rich Paddock, Police Chief for Aliso Viejo was recently asked about the ruckus, “they’re not doing anything illegal. There’s no ordinance that says it’s illegal to fly a super-double-secret, gyroscoptic UFO in county airspace.”
The best part? For about $1000 bucks, you can get in on the action! That’s right, Zingali will sell you a super-double-secret remote-controlled UFO for your very own shenanigans…but you better hope that your local police chief has the same sense of humor as Paddock. For more information, email Zingali.
