Bryan Wood

Bryan Wood

Well Known Member
Enroute to LOE we have seen a balloon tethered and flying at a very high altitude and have wondered about it. Here is a link showing something similar if not the same type balloons. Simply amazing! It's hard to believe that a cable could be light enough to lift 3 plus miles into the air and still be strong enough to keep a balloon twice as big as the Goodyear blimp from leaving with the winds up there. This is mind boggling to me. Here is link to a writeup and some pictures of these things. Yes, these are LOE thoughts starting to happen. One more week! :D

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/airdef/tars.htm

Blue Skies,
 
I asked someone in authority what they were doing with those things when they first came out (and there was one very close to an approach path out near Kennedy Space Center)...his answer?

"Trolling for Airplanes", said with a wry smile....

Stay clear - a Cessna hit one of those cables earlier this year and sheared a wing off.

Paul
 
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thats correct

he was waiting for IFR clearance but was not yet ifr so he wasnt vectored around it IIRC. check those notams
 
I flew by two of those on the same day, one in the FL keys and one up the west coast of Fl a ways. It is humbling to be at 7 or 8 thousand feet and see this huge building much higher up just sitting there, knowing that death looms below.... I've also driven by the one in the Keys when it was moored, they really are huge. I don't think the protected airspace around them is overly large, either.
 
They're called "Aerostats"

I used to work at the one at Ft. Huachuca, AZ which was the first one of its size installed. Similar ones are located at Deming, NM and Yuma, AZ. Suspended from the belly is a radar system (covered by a "windscreen") which is angled slightly downwards to troll for low flying aircraft trying to stay under the normal aircraft tracking radar. The tethers are less than 1" in diameter and the average net lift after subtracting the weight of the balloon and accessories is in the 4-7000 pound range. There are even smaller ones that they launch and fly from boats around the Gulf, I suspect looking for high speed "cigarette" boats and other methods of smuggling. The balloon I worked on was 235' long, about 70' diameter at the fattest point and when moored on the tower, the tip of the vertical fin was 120' agl. It was a fun job!
 
Back in 2000 I was flogging up the west coast of Florida in a WWI replica, on the way back from S&F. Had an eye peeled for the tethered balloon and finally spotted a blob on the horizon. A half hour later I thought it odd that it didn't seem much closer. Another half hour and I still hadn't reached it. I had a blazing 50 mph groundspeed into the wind; no way I had seen the balloon from 50 miles, and besides, I was pretty sure I had already passed the site. Hmmmm.....

Finally caught the blob. Turned out to be the Budweiser Blimp.
 
AlexPeterson said:
I flew by two of those on the same day, one in the FL keys and one up the west coast of Fl a ways. It is humbling to be at 7 or 8 thousand feet and see this huge building much higher up just sitting there, knowing that death looms below.... I've also driven by the one in the Keys when it was moored, they really are huge. I don't think the protected airspace around them is overly large, either.
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The protected airspace is a 3 mile radius. The cable is 15,000' long (less than 3 miles). If you stay clear of the airspace, you should be safe.
 
Mel said:
The cable is 15,000' long (less than 3 miles).
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Not trying to nit pik Mel, but click on the link (http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/airdef/tars.htm) and scroll down to the big blue bar accross the page for specifications. They have the abiltity to put these things up 25,000 feet. One of the points of the post was simply my amazement that they could make a balloon capable of lifting a 1" cable or whatever it is to these heights. In other words a lighter than air device that is 25,000' of cable and a 1200lb radar unit lighter than the air. My brain struggles to make sense of this. Then the second part of the amazement is the fact that a cable light enough to be lifted could stand up to the winds tugging on one of these monsters up there. When this idea was originally brought up by somebody and it was being pitched for funding I would have called "Bull$&*%" and chosen not to let it go forward out of my perceived obsurdity of the plan. It just doesn't make sense in my humble little brain that they could and did make something like this work. Thankfully there are people smarter than me that think up these kind of ideas and that I'm not in a position to have a say in whether or not they get funding. :eek: In fact, here is a wake up on my actual position in life. I've been asked to take out the garbage and I need to go now so that I can do it.

Blue Skies,
 
We're still talking less than 2 miles outside the circle. I don't cut restricted airspace that close.
 
Just imagine

If the thing broke loose at the ground and then was blown around with that 3 miles of cable in trail. I would the like a giant jelly fish with a stinging tentacle looking for airplanes to feed upon.:eek:

Kent
 
Has happened before..

I recall one of those things breaking free a few years back. I did a quick google search and came up with a bit of the story ...

WhiteBoard News for Wednesday, April 3, 2002

Rio Grande City, Texas (Ananova):

A runaway radar balloon used by the US Air Force to monitor drug traffickers has been shot down in Texas.

The 100ft helium balloon broke free from its moorings on the Mexican border.

A 2,000ft steel cable attached to it had damaged trees and pulled down electricity lines.

Air Force officials tracked the balloon for 300 miles before police deflated it by firing 75 shotgun rounds. The radar balloon is used by the US authorities to gather drugs intelligence on the Mexican border.

It broke free of its moorings in Rio Grande City and ended up in Burnet County, central Texas.

County Commissioner Bill Neve said: "We started getting reports of the balloon and about power being knocked out all over the area.

"The deputies put 75 rounds into the thing to deflate it. We thought it would stop when it was tied up in some trees, but the Air Force told us we better untie it because it could rip trees right out of the ground."

Lieutenant Michael Meridith, of Langley Air Force Base, said an investigation has been launched to discover the cause of the accident and find out how to prevent it from happening again.
 
Failure to deflat?

In a previous post I mentioned having worked at the Aerostat site on Ft. Huachuca, AZ. The balloon in service at the time('90-'94) had an auto-deflation system on it. In the event of a breakaway the balloon would ascend(duh!) and the helium would expand due to the decreasing atmospheric pressure on it until it activated a sensor which would then initiate a charge to electric wires in the skin to burn holes in it. This was designed to cause a gradual descent of the balloon (hopefully over an unpopulated area). It wasn't designed for recovery of the equipment without damage; it was more of an insurance thing to keep it from crashing down and destroying property and lives.
 
Goodgreef

N520TX said:
"The deputies put 75 rounds into the thing to deflate it. We thought it would stop when it was tied up in some trees, but the Air Force told us we better untie it because it could rip trees right out of the ground."
Click to expand...

Man, either the deputies were very poor shots, or the balloon has a very tough hide.

Kent
 
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