Ham Radio Balloon Shot Down?

If it was a Chinese balloon it would not have been shot down until it traversed the entire US.

Around the turn-of-the-century I took one of my kids (can't remember which one!) to an EOSS balloon launch. EOSS is an acronym for Edge Of Space Science and they were active in the front range of CO and maybe much more. All that I can remember is that it had ham radio APRS and video. The launch was in Pueblo CO.

Looking at Fountain Creek (our major body of water!) from >20K feet was interesting. No Google maps with satellite view then!

The USAF may have used a $400,000 missile to shoot down a $12 balloon!

https://nypost.com/2023/02/16/ufo-shot-down-by-400k-us-missi...

Our tax dollars at work!

Don’t forget it took a flight of 2 F-22 fifth generation air superiority fighter jets and a KC-135 heavy tanker to shoot down the $12 hobby balloon with a $450000 Raytheon AIM-9 missile.

fortunately, balloon boy was a hoax, or there could be a fatality.

No kidding. Judging from the tracks shown on aviation monitoring sites, the total balloon episode cost us many hours of flight time on a number of military platforms. As they tend to run in the tens of thousands of dollars per flight hour, I suspect the incurred operating costs were far higher than the missile expenditure prices.

I have had a ham radio license since 1957, 7th grade high school, then Advanced Class License, and was active until the late 1980s. I am sorry that the Ham Radio Community lost an asset. We did a lot more than hobby stuff. We went into post tornado areas in Oklahoma, and were the first line of communication, a number of times, and were also affiliated with the Civil Air Patrol defense communication system.

Sooo.... I am wondering why the ham radio balloon was not registered with the FAA so that they were aware of its presence? That would have saved the balloon and the tax money.

I cannot blame the government for the shoot down. The ham radio organization that placed the balloon in air space used by air liners with human lives on board did not do their due diligence.

How hard would it have been to put a Transpodner on it, with a small solar panel, squawking ID, Altitude, etc.

I'm not sure that I remember correctly, but I think that an F-22 costs ~$45K/hour. I jump to the conclusion but don't really know that that figure is a loaded cost that includes every thing including procurement. I don't think that it is an incremental usage cost.

More belief, not knowledge: each hour consumed by a mission diminishes the pilot's monthly training requirement.

Nothing I have read said it was for ham radios. It had gps and I don't recall what else because the club tracked it a couple times around the world.

Don't worry about the big balloon, it's the little ones that are the problem.

The very first message in this thread had two links making the association with ham radio and a third link that was explanatory. While it doesn't have to be ham radio it certainly ought to be licensed radio.

Having a GPS isn't enough to perform tracking. You need a link, in this case radio, to propagate the GPS sentence.

The CNN website link I posted above provided a link to NIBBB.org, the club that launched the balloon. That site is down today, I believe on purpose.

When NIBBB.org was up, I read their blog. They have launched more than 10 balloons. The amateur radio call sign of this balloon is K9YO (Kilo 9 Yankee Oscar). Look it up on the FCC website and you will see it belongs to an Amateur Extra Class in Illinois, the location of the club.

It has a PC board weighing 11 grams that contains the GPS and the APRS transmitter, thus the need for an FCC amateur license. A solar cell operates in the daytime. There is no battery. When the balloon comes within range of an APRS ground station in the daytime, it transmits its position to the ground station and then across the internet, and the club figures the track using special PC software.

https://aprs.fi/info/

73 dobs108

The balloon did not need registration with the FAA because it weighs less than 6 pounds.

Shooting down all balloons is ridiculous. At least the paranoia has subsided for now. Dozens of WX balloons are launched everyday.

If you are interested in what the feds think the aircraft cost to operate, you might consult the annual Reimbursement Rates documents.
According the explanatory material on the Army's edition of such a document, the rates include "costs for fuel, depot maintenance, contract logistics support, reparable and consumable parts, and crew salary resulting in a combined hourly rate."

The hourly rates for some of the aircraft types of direct interest in this incident include:

F-16C $10,866
F-22A $50,334
F-35A $13,185
KC-135R $15,703
U-2S $18,944

These do not include procurement costs.

I've used numbers for the lowest price column of four present in the FY2022 document, which are a year out-of-date, but can be viewed at:

https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/documents/rates/f...

Thanks. That is interesting. That’s an awful lot of different species of aircraft to maintain, train pilots for, etc.

"Subpart A - General

§ 101.1 Applicability.

"....
(4) Except as provided for in § 101.7, any unmanned free balloon that -

(i) Carries a payload package that weighs more than four pounds and has a weight/size ratio of more than three ounces per square inch on any surface of the package, determined by dividing the total weight in ounces of the payload package by the area in square inches of its smallest surface;

(ii) Carries a payload package that weighs more than six pounds;

(iii) Carries a payload, of two or more packages, that weighs more than 12 pounds; or

(iv) Uses a rope or other device for suspension of the payload that requires an impact force of more than 50 pounds to separate the suspended payload from the balloon. "

So as long as the payload is less than 4 pounds (6 pounds if the 'density' is less than 3 oz / square inch) the FAA doesn't even want to know about it. They certainly would not track it.