[NLRS] One of balloons shot down was Amateur Radio related

[David Palm]

It costs $9000/hour to keep an F16 in the air.  Sidewinder missiles cost
about $400K a pop.  Your tax dollars at work.....

On Sat, Feb 18, 2023 at 6:31 PM Bill Davis via NLRS <nlrs at mailman.qth.net>
wrote:

> Illinois hobbyist club’s party balloon missing near where military shot
> down UFO
> By Jake Sheridan
> Chicago Tribune
> •
> Feb 17, 2023 at 7:18 pm
>
> In this image taken from a video shot by Tom Medlin on June 11, 2022, a
> pico balloon, which costs about $12 and is about 32 inches in diameter,
> floats in the air near Collierville, Tenn. Medlin, owner of the Amateur
> Radio Roundtable podcast, believes a similar balloon is what the U.S.
> military shot down over the Yukon recently. Hobbyists typically fly the
> balloons for fun. (Tom Medlin)
>
> As spy balloon panic sent fighter pilots to the skies, the military may
> have taken out a not-so-hostile object: an Illinois amateur hobbyist
> group’s party balloon.
>
> The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, a hobbyist group that
> launches hydrogen-filled, radio-equipped pico balloons and tracks them as
> they fly across the world, has declared one of its balloons “missing in
> action.”
>
> The balloon stopped transmitting signals when it had been set to fly near
> the area in Canada where a military fighter jet shot down an unidentified
> object last week.
>
> If the time-and-date fit is more than a coincidence, the balloon never
> stood a chance: The hobbyists use large, plastic party balloons that cost
> as little as $13 for their scientific fun; the military reportedly took the
> UFO out with heat-seeking missiles.
>
> The balloon, identified by the hobbyist club as K9YO, had already
> circumnavigated the globe six times.
>
> It had been declared missing several times before since its Oct. 10
> launch, once for as long as 30 days, and it’s not unusual for time to
> elapse between location transmissions, the NIBBB said in a statement posted
> on its website.
>
> K9YO last transmitted its location shortly after midnight on Feb. 11 as it
> flew near Alaska’s Hagemeister Island, off the southwest coast of Alaska,
> the NIBBB said. The balloon had been flying near 39,000 feet and wind
> models predicted it would soon fly over Canada’s Yukon Territory, analysis
> on the NIBBB’s website shows.
>
> Later that day, the North American Aerospace Defense Command detected an
> unidentified object floating from American airspace in Alaska into Canadian
> airspace in the Yukon Territory at around 40,000 feet.
>
> Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden
> ordered the military to take out the UFO, the two powerful countries
> scrambled jets, and a Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor shot the object down.
> Military leaders have since described the object as a “balloon.” Canadian
> forces have attempted to recover the downed object, but the military has
> not reported finding it. The White House acknowledged the object and two
> others recently shot down may have had a “benign purpose.”
>
> “The intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that
> these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,”
> White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday.
>
> Meanwhile, the group of Illinois hobbyists has tried to carefully
> contextualize the halted balloon transmissions, noting that the models that
> predict flight paths are often incorrect and that balloons often go
> “missing” before ultimately sending transmissions again.
>
> “As has been widely reported, no part of the object shot down by the US
> Air Force jet over the Yukon territory has been recovered,” NIBBB members
> wrote. “Until that happens and that object is confirmed to be an
> identifiable pico balloon, any assertions or claims that our balloon was
> involved in that incident are not supported by facts.”
>
> The North American Aerospace Defense Command did not immediately respond
> to calls and emails requesting asking about the downed object.
>
> *The Associated Press contributed.*
>
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