# radio transmitter weather balloon fell in my yard



## greenheadhunter (Aug 26, 2005)

yah i look in my back yard and see this big orange balloon type deal, and im not thinkin much of any thing. so i pull it out of the tree and it has a little box on it that says property of US government if fould in the us please put in attached baggie and mail. postage paid for. it goes on to say... harmless weather transmitter. it said it tracks weather 17 miles in the sky. well im pretty sure satellites are 12 miles up.so any one know any thing about this. one more thing. i live in central illinois.


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## tsodak (Sep 7, 2002)

Satellites are much much higher than that. i think that the shuttle normally orbits at 150 miles altitude. If you think about it, jets normally cruise around 40000 feet, do the math and that is around 8 miles. U-2's used to fly at 75000 feet, still enough atmosphere to fly there. I found one last week as well. My third one in my life. Actually pretty cool.

Tom


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## faithsdave (Jan 8, 2004)

That would be cool. Any pics?


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## h2ofwlr (Feb 6, 2004)

Yeah take a few pics just for future reference, a good conversation piece and then could show the pics of it. :beer:


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## Flick (Aug 21, 2002)

When I was younger we found one of those back in the woods by my house when we were shootin birds with our slingshots. We thought that was the coolest thing, I think we did end up sending it in.


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## Dan Bueide (Jul 1, 2002)

> My third one in my life


What? Hey Tom, would you mind suggesting a few Powerball numbers?


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## Fallguy (Jan 23, 2004)

I think around here they send them from Bismarck, ND and International Falls, MN if I remember right. For Illinois I am not sure though.


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## tsodak (Sep 7, 2002)

Man, in my first life I farmed a lot of ground and you get a real good look at a lot of acres. The last one we were certifying wetlands near Pillsbury and found one along the edge of a slough. It had laid there it looked like for a year, the balloon was totally gone. The only thing left was the instrument package. I bet it had been looked at a dozen times by different folks who had no idea what it was. The guys I was with didn't.

They come with a self addresswed plastic bag in the package. All you have to do is stick the package in and seal it up. I just mailed it last Wed, cant remember where they go to.

Tom


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## DJRooster (Nov 4, 2002)

not a weather ballon but...About 5 years ago my wife and I were coming home from Fargo in October and west of Gwinner about 15 miles I could see a hot air balloon coming down in a field. I told my wife that something was wrong because it was way to windy to be ballooning and that we needed to go over and help them. When we got there sure enough they did need some help and after we got the balloon deflated I started to visit with these three scraggly looking men. Turns out they had left New Mexico three days earlier on a hot air ballon race. The reason they had come down at sundown in North Dakota was that they didn't want to stay up another night and land up in the woods in Manitoba or Ontario. I had to help the chase car find the landing area and had to sign their log saying they had landed at such and such GPS reading. They were very appreciative and asked for my address. Later that fall they sent us some nice balloon race pins and a letter telling us about the race. The racers who won chose to stay up that night and landed as you can guess up in the woods of Ontario and couldn't get there balloon out until the next spring. It was an interesting experience to say the least.


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