Project Loon, high altitude balloons

This is something a little different for today... I was looking over New Zealand and noticed about 17 high altitude balloons from Google's Project Loon.

What makes these flights a little different is that the predominate winds over new Zealand tend to be westerly at the higher altitudes that these things are floating along at. These flights however show very clear southerly winds and, particularly as they get up above Auckland, an easterly component.

If this keeps up [which I doubt], they'll be over Australia in a few days [rather unlikely, I suspect]. Below is a partial screen cap from Flightradar24.com [links to Flightradar24 on another blog page]. Enjoy!

Europe Trip 2011 #7: Balloon ride in the middle of Berlin

I was out and about tonight and saw something a bit different - a tethered balloon ride! This balloon is designed to take tourists for a great view of the city, although I heard yesterday that is was EUR90, so way outside of what I would want to be paying!

Anyway, the interesting thing is that this appears to be on the German aircraft register, as it has a registration of D-OCUL! I guess it would be operating in controlled airspace [with 2 airports in close proximity], although it is tethered full time and I doubt it would be capable of [safe] untethered flight. Who knows!

The wording on the side says it all - der Welt translates as "the world", and yes, the world map on the side does include New Zealand :-)

Anyway, here it is!