[LeArc] Fwd: [GPSL] Hunter discovers fallen Canadian science balloon (Maine)

[Mark A Garrett]

Thought this might be of interest to the group.

Mark, KA9SZX


----- Forwarded Message ---- 
From: Greg Williams < k4hsm at lock-net.com > 

Subject: [GPSL] Hunter discovers fallen Canadian science balloon (Maine) 






HIGHLAND PLANTATION -- When Stanley Giguere went out deer hunting Nov. 24, he was startled by what he said looked like a big orange parachute in a tree near Spruce Pond Road. 

"I went and investigated it. It was a great big balloon that had popped. It was about 30 feet across and down at the bottom was a pink box with an antenna sticking out. I saw a red light on. It had a camera in it. I had mother with me and I said: 'It's looking at us.'" 

Giguere chucked the balloon into the back of his truck. He and his wife, Retta, took it to their home three miles away in Pleasant Ridge Plantation, where they began to examine it. 

"I took it apart and all there was, was little stickers of this school. We looked it up on the computer and e-mailed them: 'We found your balloon,'" said Giguere, the road commissioner of Pleasant Ridge. 

What Giguere had happened upon was a weather balloon project undertaken by parents and children of the Perth Children's House Montessori School in Ontario, at least 550 kilometers away as the crow flies. 

What Giguere didn't know was that a tracking car with three residents of Perth was circling the area at about the same time, in search of the downed balloon. By 10:30 p.m. and Peter McCracken and two friends were driving around Stratton in the dark. 

"I tried to call him the next day," Giguere said. "But before I got off the phone, this guy from Fairfield pulled into the driveway tracking it. These other guys (from Perth) weren't but 10 minutes behind. It was pretty amazing. They tracked it right to my doorstep." 

The Fairfield man was Eric Foster, a ham radio operator who had been tracking the device, according to McCracken, who had taken a long and speedy trip from Ontario to the hills of Highland Plantation in search of the balloon, using laptops to track it by radio signal. 

"It was a very long day for us," McCracken said Monday by phone. 

McCracken said the balloon project was an extracurricular science activity for the school. They purchased the balloon at a specialty store and did class science lessons about weather balloons. They enlisted the help of the Amateur Radio Emergency Service and launched the balloon at 9:45 a.m. on Nov. 24, complete with a Global Satellite Positioning system receiver, camera and radio transmitter. Inflated on the ground, the balloon was about six feet in diameter and filled with helium. As it increased in altitude, the balloon expanded to nearly 30 feet in diameter, when it was expected to break. 

"Stanley (Giguere) found it the same day. It doesn't take long when it's going 160 miles an hour in the jet stream. We didn't get there until about 8 p.m. that night, at which point it was very dark," McCracken said. "We got to within a half-mile of where the balloon was, but couldn't go after it because it was too dark, and we were on the wrong side of a big river. We knew where it landed, but once he picked it up and threw it in his truck, we couldn't see (the radio signal) anymore." 

Turns out the Perth folks were on the wrong side of Burnt Hill Mountain, which Giguere said "borders real close to Long Falls Dam Road in Lexington. You could look right down on the Highland Lodge, but you can't drive there from this side. In a straight line, it's about 3.5 miles from my house, which is at the top of Pleasant Ridge Plantation. They were expecting it to go to Lake Champlain and it came right across the mountains into Maine." 

McCracken said four cars loaded with helpers and laptops got as far as the border at Woburn in Quebec at about 5 p.m. that day, and decided only one car would cross. 

"We were burning the candle at both ends," said McCracken, who was joined by Rick Szijarto and Marc Baillon. "The border guard wondered why we had a canoe on the car in the middle of the winter. But if it landed in water... we didn't have any control over that." 

McCracken said the balloon reached an estimated altitude of 118,000 feet. He said they had accurate measurements to 78,800 feet, but because of military restrictions, the GPS system is required to limit the measurements in terms of velocity, acceleration and altitude: "That's basically so someone can't make a cruise missile and bomb the United States. We estimated it went about 550 kilometers as the crow files, or as the balloon flies I should say. That's about 350 miles to Highland Plantation. 

"We still didn't have contact," McCracken said, "but when (Giguere) opened up the package, it gave one final gasp of information to the airwaves and we found him that way, on Sunday around lunchtime, 11 a.m. Nov. 25." He said David Corigan, a hunting guide from Pleasant Ridge, was a big help. 

McCracken said ham radio operators and Internet followers were tuned in from all over the country: "We got calls from Tampa, Florida, the Midwest and Quebec." 

For Giguere said it was an equally amazing adventure: "Technology nowadays is really unreal." 

Darla L. Pickett -- 474-9534, Ext. 341 

dpickett at centralmai ne.com 
-- 
Greg Williams
K4HSM k4hsm at knology. net http://www.twiar. org http://www.etskywar n.net