Airbus Fly By up High

Great sound, but that really wasn't all that close.



Mark

 

Wow that is really cool!

 

There's a Newark in New York?

And is it legal for balloons to be flying in the airways at 38,000 feet?

 

Cool !
I wonder if the pilots knew there was a ballon floating around.

 

I launched a high altitude helium balloon about 4 years ago. If it weighs under 10 lbs (including the weight of the balloon) you don't need to get FAA approval. If its more than that you do.

The balloon was the heaviest part. 3 Go Pro, one GPS tracker, and some plastic parts connected to a simple aluminum frame barely came in under.

I used a professional balloon launching company out of San Diego to do it. GPS tracker had the altitude max out at over 55,000 feet before the balloon broke. The company estimated that the balloon reached bigger than a greyhound bus by the time it blew up. Total flight time was about 2 hours 15 minutes. 10 minutes from burst to ground (the parachute only partially opened because of shreds of the balloon getting in the way.)

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-eQaSI0NDw[/ame]

 

That's very cool. I guess any chance of a collision is incredibly small.

 

Very clever, lots of questions come to mind.

 

My guess is that it's unlikely that they acquired it visually. It's often hard enough to find other aircraft traffic even when you know exactly where they are on TCAS. If it's higher jet traffic the contrail helps significantly but a balloon at lower altitude would be extremely tough.

I have seen one weather balloon flying and it was fairly near the release point at around 6k feet. It was only a few seconds from visual acquisition to passing by it. I suppose if you wanted to you could purposefully find a weather balloon to fly by as they are released on a regular schedule from some weather stations.

The only other strange high altitude sighting I have made was a large bird (likely Frigate Bird) at 10k feet in the eye of Hurricane Matthew when it was off the coast of Haiti last year.

 

Only 500 feet difference at that height and speed? I'd consider it damn close lol..

In the youtube video they give a ton of info about using transponders, NOTAM etc to fly legally but heck it's a balloon and with huge closing speed I bet it still comes up as something else as you zip by within just 500 feet!

 

Hearing the aircraft at that altitude is truly new & unique. Sound was awesome. Was looking for any possible wake turbulence on the balloon.

Thanks for posting.

 

Wow that was crazy. I know it's just a small Go-Pro, but hypothetically couldn't it cause some damage requiring emergent landing like cracked windshield or sucked into the engine?

 

Did you have a thread about this back then? For some reason I think I remember reading about this.

 

Now that you mention it United had a 757 have to make a return to ORD due to sucking a balloon on take off.

Incident: United B752 at Chicago on Jun 10th 2017, an engine and a balloon