Narrative:

I was cruising in good VMC when an object appeared nearly in front of me. At first I thought it was a large bird but as it got closer I realized it was man made and looked like a large model airplane with one wing and one engine. I'm not absolutely certain it was a model airplane because the closure rate was very high. I was doing 180 KTS and it was either stationary; moving in the same direction at a much slower speed; or moving in the opposite direction. If I had to pick one; I'd go with heading in nearly the opposite direction at something like 50 KTS (based on the closure rate which seemed higher than I normally see when coming into a cloud). I saw three distinct and rather bright colors: red; yellow; and gray. I would estimate the object's size as 3-4 feet long and about 1 foot high. I didn't see any wings clearly enough to estimate wingspan but the 'fuselage' (which appeared to be round) was about 1 foot wide. I'm fairly certain that this was not a balloon; at least it didn't' look at all like any balloon I've ever seen from the air or the ground. And yes; I have flown near manned balloons as well as toy balloons before; none of which looked anything like this object. Given the high closure rate and perhaps my late detection of it; I never had time to take any evasive action; from initial sighting to passing off my right wing the elapsed time was no more than several seconds. Shortly after the encounter I described it to the controller handling my flight at lansing approach and he indicated that he had nothing in the area on his radar besides my airplane.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: BE55 pilot had a close encounter with an unidentifiable object he described as possibly a model aircraft.

Narrative: I was cruising in good VMC when an object appeared nearly in front of me. At first I thought it was a large bird but as it got closer I realized it was man made and looked like a large model airplane with one wing and one engine. I'm not absolutely certain it was a model airplane because the closure rate was very high. I was doing 180 KTS and it was either stationary; moving in the same direction at a much slower speed; or moving in the opposite direction. If I had to pick one; I'd go with heading in nearly the opposite direction at something like 50 KTS (based on the closure rate which seemed higher than I normally see when coming into a cloud). I saw three distinct and rather bright colors: red; yellow; and gray. I would estimate the object's size as 3-4 feet long and about 1 foot high. I didn't see any wings clearly enough to estimate wingspan but the 'fuselage' (which appeared to be round) was about 1 foot wide. I'm fairly certain that this was NOT a balloon; at least it didn't' look at all like any balloon I've ever seen from the air or the ground. And yes; I have flown near manned balloons as well as toy balloons before; none of which looked anything like this object. Given the high closure rate and perhaps my late detection of it; I never had time to take any evasive action; from initial sighting to passing off my right wing the elapsed time was no more than several seconds. Shortly after the encounter I described it to the Controller handling my flight at Lansing Approach and he indicated that he had nothing in the area on his radar besides my airplane.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.