January 27, 1989

• Private citizens who have reported UFO sightings to government officials sometimes complain of secrecy, frustration and laughter.
  
• Floyd Petri founded the Center for Instrumented UFO Research in Bastrop in part to circumvent such bureaucratic hassles.
  
• "Our purpose is to confirm the existence or nonexistence of the UFO by scientific means," said Petri, a retired police chief.
  
• "Before organizations such as this existed, an individual was nothing more than a UFO buff or a witness. Often, after people made a report to the authorities, that was the last they heard of it. Any physical evidence they offered went up in smoke."
  
• Petri said the 10-year-old center is accumulating equipment and personnel to set up a monitoring station and a field unit, probably in a van. Both will be equipped with devices such as radar, mangetometers, cameras, video equipment, radiation and sound detection equipment, and chart recorders.
  
• "There are many Americans who are funding this kind of research right out of their own pockets," he said. "Just like there are people who spend thousands of dollars a year fishing. This is my hobby. This is where my money goes. There also have been donations and benefactors interested in our research."
  
• The scientific instrumentation -- much of which the center owns--sounds impressive. But some of the most fruitful research -- retrieving government documents pertaining to UFOs -- forces the private UFO investigator to use simpler but equally powerful tools such as typewriters and the mail.
  
• "The Freedom of Information Act is one of the nicest things that ever happened to us," Petri said. "There is a world of information in the hands of the government and individuals. If it was gathered, studied and disseminated properly, the information would shed some light on the UFO enigma. Many groups are trying to do that now."
  
• Petri's organization is interested in investigating suspected landing sites and trace materials from all kinds of encounters -- from cattle mutilations to indentations thought to be made by saucer landing pods. And the center is involved in the computer enhancement of photos showing UFOs to determine their validity.
  
• UFO abduction cases also draw the center's attention if there's evidence in addition to an abductee's account.
  
• Petri also serves as state section director of Bastrop and Travis Counties for the Mutual UFO Network.
  
• The center and MUFON work together to train UFO investigators, discuss cases and plan field trips for investigations. Joint meetings are under the acronym PULSE -- Project UFO Landings, Sightings and Encounters -- so the two organizations can maintain separate identities.
  
• "The goals are to share information and ferret out bad, distorted information," Petri said. "So the organizations don't mind communicating."
  
• Ten members are training to be field investigators. Three have been trained. Most are professional people with skills such as photography, computers, legal investigation and medicine.
  
• Membership is by invitation. The center seeks people with professional expertise that could be of use in UFO investigations. Though it costs nothing to join, members must subscribe to the MUFON UFO Journal.
  
• "We're not here to make converts but to collect evidence," Petri said.