Field Investigator Free Online Tools

Field Investigator Free Online ToolsAugust 1, 2022
by Bob Spearing, MUFON Director of International Investigations

(This page is under construction and growing weekly!)

The Field Investigator in the 21st Century has access to any number of free and for purchase tools available on line in order to advance their investigation. Here is a list of various websites a field investigator can use that utilize the scientific method. An instruction on how to use these tools successfully accompanies the links provided!

www.flightradar24.com

 

This website has both free and subscription based memberships. Depending on what you need, a gold membership for approximately 40 dollars per year, for example, can provide you with historical aircraft flights for 3 years. Additionally, you will not only get that plane’s origination, flight path, final destination and flight time, but you will, in most cases, get a photo of the exact plane detailing its make and model, altitude, speed and other pertinent data.
While using this info does not find a UFO, it does allow you to identify and eliminate mundane aircraft from your investigation.

 

https://www.timeanddate.com/

This is an excellent free website that can give a field investigator accurate times in a particular time zone and allow that investigator to concert time zones from places such as England to California. It is important to understand that many satellites and other technological resources utilize UTC Time where zero hour is based out of Greenwich, England. For example, giving preference to changing seasons, in the summer months, the time difference between Greenwich England and New York City is 5 hours in the summer and 4 hours difference in the winter. So if it is midnight in Greenwich England in July, it is 5 hours later in New York. Midnight in Greenwich translates into 5 am in New York City. This is important when using websites to track planes such as flightradar24. A flight out of England at 11 pm. may actually be 4 am New York time. An error in time reported can undermine a UFO report totally. If you are an investigator in New York investigating an occurrence in Taiwan concerning an air flight, you must be aware of time zone changes when utilizing various websites and software that are time sensitive!

https://www.wunderground.com

 

 

Wunderground.com is an excellent tool for generating important weather information to use in a sighting report. However, it does not have the flexibility of a weather reporting system such as the Iowa State weather reporting system,. Wunderground.com can give you lots of information such as cloud ceiling, weather events, dew point, temperature, wind speed, wind gusts and a whole host of other weather related data over the course of a 24 hour period.

https://stellarium-web.org/

Stellarium-web.org is an online planetarium. It is free to use. The software is downloadable also. You can change your location to anywhere in the world by clicking on a radio button in the lower left hand corner. You can change the date and time by clicking on the radio button in the lower right hand corner. You can actually get planet, star, sun and moon positions back thousands of years for your research. Using Stellarium will allow you to approximate what natural phenomena may be mistake as UFOs by the witness when you have their location, time of day, date, timezone, degrees in angle in the sky where they saw their purported UFO and direction they were facing. While Project Blue Book rarely used the scientific method to determine case dispositions, they sometimes got Venus correct when a witness mistook the bright planet for a UFO. You can use the same methodology here!

CelesTrak.org

This is a fascinating sitre that allows you to track rocket launches, Starlink trains of satellites, satellites from numerous countries as well as space junk and the International Space Station.

 

Orbitrack https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orbitrack/id1092984911

https://29a.ch/photo-forensics/#forensic-magnifier

http://www.nuforc.org/ ,
https://www.narcap.org/ ,
http://www.cufos.org/

Cloud Base Calculator- https://www.easycalculation.com/weather/cloud-base.php
The Drone Database- https://www.dw.com/en/a-guide-to-military-drones/a-39441185
Military Bases- https://public.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/military-bases/table/
American Meteor Society- https://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/fireball-report/
AMA Club Search- https://www.modelaircraft.org/club-finder
Sky Vector- https://skyvector.com/
Antenna Search- http://www.antennasearch.com/
Storm Prediction Center- http://www.spc.noaa.gov/obswx/maps/
Elevation Finder- https://www.freemaptools.com/elevation-finder.htm
Cal Sky- https://www.calsky.com/

https://www.metadata2go.com/
www.mediainfo.com
irfranview.com
https://www.easymapmaker.com/

https://stevemorse.org/jcal/dms.html

Farmer’s Almanac- https://www.farmersalmanac.com/weather-history/
Blender- https://www.blender.org/
Filmora- https://filmora.wondershare.com/
Paint- https://www.getpaint.net/
Exif Tool- https://exiftool.org/install.html
Zoom Video Conferencing- https://zoom.us/
Lunar Calendar- https://kalender-365.de/lunar-calendar.php?

App suggestions- Geocam, Phyphox, Physics Toolbox, Radiation Meter, ISS Detector, Heavens Above, Army Knife for Android, US Topo Maps, Theodolite, GPS Coordinates, Fake Image Detector, Sky View Lite, Gaia GPS, Gauges, Voice Recorder, GEO Camera, Weather Maps, Voice Memos, Foto Detector, Toolbox
Free Samples: Chain of Custody-
https://www.connoverpackaging.com/sample-request

https://www.suncalc.org/#/40.1789,-3.5156,3/2022.08.01/01:20/1/3