So after 10 hours it seems to have landed in the middle of Martha's Vineyard. I wonder if someone will find it? When zoomed in you can see its last report in Manuel F. Correllus State Forest but it may well have crossed or even landed in Martha's Vineyard Airport at it was still at 410m at its last report. The shorter of the two runways it was closest to at the time is only 3,328' long so the balloon would have only been 500' from the airport grounds where the track ends. So while its descent was probably mostly vertical it may well have continued to travel Eastward a little bit.
Nothing about it in the Martha's Vineyard news that I could find, though.
Chris, dave launched s9 with a very different path taken
ReplyDeletehttp://www.qrp-labs.com/ultimate3/ve3kcl-balloons/ve3kcl-s9.html
It sure is different. Thanks for letting us know. Dave's launch schedule is erratic and I don't check his page every day. Maybe some kind of WSPR alert is needed so we hear about them right away.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, based on his page s8 was descending quite slowly and he speculated that it actually crossed Martha's Vineyard and splashed into the nearby Atlantic. With the airport traffic pattern at 1000' and the balloon's last report at 1,345' it certainly had the potential for collision or at least a sighting.
I should chime in here .. although this looks really bad. There are a few points I should make. 1. The radio and antenna weighs less than a house sparrow. 2. the wires and strings are set to break at 3lbs force in case of a collision.
ReplyDelete3. The gps position and altitude is recorded and put in a buffer and then transmitted 8-10 minutes later so in actual fact the balloon landed not on the runway but probably in the Atlantic.
4. There has never been a reported accident with a weather balloon and an aircraft since 1949 and there are about 400000 weather balloons launched annually with payloads of about a pound.
This looks bad but in fact it may not be.
73 Dave VE3KCL
Hi Dave - yes, understood. Having done a bit of flying myself I know that it's a big sky out there, although a lot less so near airports. With the very low weight and low probability the potential for a problem is tiny, and would probably be manifest mostly in the surprise it would give the pilot. The other factor is that even 6 place grid squares are fairly large so the balloon could have just as easily passed a bit North or South of the airport.
ReplyDelete73,
Chris
Hi Chris.. the position map is derived from Maidenhead subsquares that have a accuracy of 12km... so although the balloon may have been near pattern altitude instead of flying over the runway, as the map suggests, it could have been up to 6 airport widths over in either direction. Also Martha's probably has it's share of seagulls which could present a more formidable pilot pucker than the balloon's 23gms.
ReplyDelete73 Dave VE3KCL
Yes I had a near miss with a hawk once. At 100 knots that would have been messy.
ReplyDelete