[GCARC] Balloon launch cancelled for Biden trip

[Jon Pearce]

Unfortunately President Biden is apparently going to Delaware for the weekend prompting the FAA to issue a Temporary Flight Restriction for an area broadly surrounding his location which includes our clubhouse and the airspace in which the balloon might fly. The TFR bans "balloon operations", which we're not sure applies to the tiny balloons that we fly that aren't to the FAA Part 101 balloon regulations but we can't take that chance so we're cancelling tomorrow's planned launch.

We may try a midweek launch of the smaller high-pressure Mylar ORBS balloons that just arrived along with a Pi Pico transmitter if we can get one configured tomorrow. If you're interested in how these balloons are assembled come on over to the Clubhouse tomorrow and watch.

The following Saturday (August 10) is Tech Saturday and I'll be away at the EME conference so there's no launch opportunity then. The first weekend opportunity will be August 17 and we'll try to launch the big SBS superpressure balloon at that time, again weather and presidential travel permitting.

Thanks to Marc WM2Y for watching the FAA notices and tipping us off to this issue.

73 de Jon WB2MNF