[TriLUG] WRAL: Raleigh man attempts Atlantic crossing

R Radford rradford at mindspring.com
Sat Sep 14 16:57:02 EDT 2013


And this is a good article about the reason he aborted:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/balloonist-stranded-in-newfoundland-rescued-by-cbc-1.1704396

He was not able to achieve a stable altitude, but instead would fly low
forcing him to ditch ballast and then over shoot too high - a cycle that
repeated several times.  He knew that if he did not get a stable altitude,
he would not have enough ballast to make it across and after several hours
of trying, Newfoundland represented his last possible land mass where he
could ditch.

He had the option of ditching close at dark on land in Newfoundland, or
waiting until the next morning and ditching out to sea and he opted for
land.  The area where he landed was so remote that he decided to just pull
the tent over his canopy and camp out where he landed. In one message, it
seemed he was not even sure if he was on land or in the trees, so the
vegetation must have been very dense and it was getting too dark to see.

The last I heard, they were hoping to have the payload helicopter lifted
out sometime on Sunday.

I am just hoping he gets the kinks out and gets the funding to go again, if
that is what he wants...



On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 11:30 AM, Alan Porter <porter at trilug.org> wrote:

>
> This is one of the best articles I have seen on Jonathan's aborted flight,
> plus it has some very nice pictures of the launch and the early part of his
> flight.
>
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/**news/article-2418598/Jonathan-**
> Trappe-IT-manager-attempts-**cross-Atlantic-simply-**
> clinging-helium-BALLOONS.html<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2418598/Jonathan-Trappe-IT-manager-attempts-cross-Atlantic-simply-clinging-helium-BALLOONS.html>
>
> Alan
>
>
>
>  As I mentioned in the meeting last night, Jonathan Trappe is
>> attempting to cross the Atlantic in his cluster balloon.
>>
>> Some might remember Jonathan from the September 2010 TriLUG
>> meeting, where he and Tanner Lovelace gave a presentation on
>> their nearspace balloon project.
>>
>
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