Thursday 14 April 2016

Europe Bound?

VE3KCL's S-9 Balloon Experiment has certainly been making the rounds of the North Atlantic, first doing a loop around Greenland, then another around Iceland before almost returning to the point where it passed by Newfoundland in the first 24 hours of its journey, although it is now travelling in the opposite direction.

You can see in the map below the most likely nighttime path has been added to the map in blue, while the daytime path, reported by the on board GPS, is shown in red. The night time paths are calculated from NOAA wind predictions, as explained on the web page.


Last night's path hasn't been added yet but it is fairly easy to imagine. The last report yesterday was somewhat Southeast of Iceland and during the night it traveled Southwest where at daybreak it started reporting again off the coast of Newfoundland. Perhaps now it will find fair winds to Europe. It is still maintaining altitude at 9990 metres, or 32,776' so it seems to be holding together well.

This morning (as of 0900 EDT, 1300Z) most of the reports are from North American stations including two from Ontario in FN25. Its most recent report was picked up by only two stations, VE1VDM (near Truro, NS) and W3BH (Pennsylvania).


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