& they’re off!
The Torabhaig Atlantic Explorer has just launched from Presque Isle, Maine heading to Europe to finally fulfill Bert’s childhood dream. Follow along with the live tracker here
Not if you want to avoid your phone being tracked to that hotel you don’t.
But I get the joke.
Certainly an exciting adventure. But collecting microbes at 8,000 ft to save the world sounds ambitious. Best of luck to them.
I hope they worked out how to discharge any static electricity on the balloon. Otherwise it’s a best-of Led Zeppelin album cover.
I think that is neat, but firsts are getting pretty specific: “first hydrogen open basket transatlantic”
I suppose “first solo hydrogen open basket transatlantic” will be soon.
Brian
Makes me think of the BS baseball “statistics” (trivia actually) that sportscasters love to trot out when bored.
Hydrogen has more lift than Helium but the equipment is heavier because everything needs to be anti-static; therefore, the two have about the same amount of lift. Helium is ridiculously expensive & the gas ballooning community has been using hydrogen for years w/o incident. Yes, you need to be more careful, especially around inflation but lots of gasses/fuels are dangerous & don’t routinely have any issues.
I don’t necessarily disagree but there are three main types of balloons
- Hot air - the colorful ones everyone is used to; typically fly for ≈ 45min -1 hr; take paying passengers. Control vertical by firing the burners (up) or venting / cooling off (down)
- Gas balloons - filled w/ a lighter-than-air gas. Mostly plain white/light color (for thermal management). Fly long distance (hundreds+ miles) over a period of a couple of days. Fly high enough the pilots must take O2 with them. If you do nothing, one would rise every morning (thermal heating) & descend in the evening as the sun goes down. Control vertical by removing ballast (sand or water) a little bit at a time to go up or venting your LTA gas to go down.
- Rozier - a combination of the above two, where hot air heats the helium; these are used in the longest distance flights; trans-ocean, around-the-world, etc. These are frequently enclosed capsules. Make sure to choose the “English” option on the link at the beginning of this line. Sorry all of the text is in English but the arrows in the photos are still in French but I bet you can figure most of it out.
Update on the flight - they have landed near Cardross, Prince Edward Island with a suspected gas leak. Since H is an LTA gas, it would vent upward, away from them, but mean they wouldn’t have enough lift to safely make it across the ocean.
Somehow it struck me funny that a balloon could run out of gas over the ocean.
I’m assuming the trip has been cancelled since the tracking site is no longer showing anything.
I was expecting some kind of update.
I know two of the pilots, additional members of the launch team & others who were there for launch. The word I’d use to describe the lead pilot is “meticulous”; I know everything was check & at least double checked if not at least also triple checked before/during inflation. While I don’t know the particulars, I’m guessing it was a problem with the valve sealing, which is, of course, all the way at the top. I don’t know the specifics of where they touched down but I do know they didn’t have any equipment there, no hi-lift to look at it, no H truck to top it off again. They also didn’t have anything to tie off to. Keeping an untethered balloon up for that long isn’t the safest of ideas.so they’d have to deflate & start again. Now you’ve got logistical issues; did they have enough hydrogen in the truck for another fill, where is the truck/driver & does he have any hours available to come back to the field. Where are all the people who assisted/watched the launch, on their way back home? Is the weather as favorable to start again 24 hrs later? Is there budget for more hydrogen & hotel rooms to do it again? Having already flown thru one night, it’s probably best for the pilots to get good sleep instead of trying to go again right away. (you can get rest but not exactly a good night’s sleep up there).
My guess is that they’ll reset & attempt again but no way would that be right away again.
If you go back to the website; there are some photos; including pallets of sandbags, the balloon during inflation, & everything clipped onto the basket. A lot of that is the aforementioned sand with the rest being clothing, food, & gear because, as you can see, that’s not a very big space for 3 people for 4-5 days
# Improperly torqued magneto hardware fatal for pilot
- A post-accident examination of the engine revealed that a single-drive dual magneto was installed. The magneto was located in its normal relative position on the mounting pad, however it was not securely attached to the mounting pad.
I’d never seen or heard of a single-drive dual magneto. It seems to be counterproductive for a true independent ignition system. The article made it sound picky to install.
Only two? I kid, thanks for the update. A very interesting endeavor.
Any magneto is installed a bit like an old school automotive distributor. It needs to be attached to the engine case, then rotated to set the timing then clamped down tight.
If any fastener(s) back out, the timing will shift. And engines have very little tolerance for bad ignition timing.
Redundancy only goes so deep. Two completely separate mags both engaging the same drive gear will both fail together if the gear does. Etc. I’ll tell a war story on this later when I’m not on my phone.
I wonder what role density altitude played in this event?
Overall the early returns are that the shop muffed a fairly simple installation of unfamiliar hardware.
The apparent fact the prior mag installation had reversed P leads says the airplane was a mess before the shop ever touched it. I wonder if the pilot owner was doing maintenance beyond his skill or FAA authority?
The National Transportation Safety Board said one part inside the right engine of the Boeing 737-800 was loose and had been installed in the wrong direction and that fuel was leaking from the fitting of another part that was also fastened incorrectly. The preliminary findings don’t identify the cause of the fire because the NTSB won’t reach that conclusion until after it completes its investigation likely sometime next year. But former NTSB and FAA investigator Jeff Guzzetti said the problems investigators found in the engine appear to be the source of the fuel that caught fire. To me, it looks like improper maintenance in the right engine leading to a fuel leak,” Guzzetti said after reading the NTSB report.
Report at:
I had a magneto impulse coupler (spring) break on run-up and to this day I don’t know why it messed with the other magneto. I couldn’t get more than 1500 RPM on the good mag. A very unsettling event. All I can think is I may have cold-soaked the plugs by over priming.
Skydiving Plane Carrying 20 People Crashes in Tennessee
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The plane crashed soon after it left Tullahoma Regional Airport at around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 8, according to Lyle Russell, a spokesperson for the city of Tullahoma, which is about 75 miles south of Nashville.
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The spokesperson said in a statement to PEOPLE that 20 people, including crew members and passengers, were aboard the aircraft when it crashed.
No casualties. Looks like a Shorts 360. The news reader said the tail was damaged. Well yes, when it’s not attached to the plane you can call that damaged.
OTOH, this can only improve the appearance of a Shorts aircraft. Ugliest planes ever built.
Australia says “hold my beer.”
It’s postapocalyptically ugly:
