777 Hits Weather Balloon in Cruise

[megan]

Does the radiosonde return to earth when the balloon breaks? Is it then recovered (that sounds costly and hard work)

My recall from an article is that the US recover about 30% and one of the Nordic countries was 60%.

[421dog]

Last month, I flew past one by at no more than 10 meters at 16000’ between layers with sketchy visibility. Didn’t hit it, been flying since 1982, and never had it happen before. Not thinking it will happen again….

[Sue Vêtements]

So looking at the picture, maybe it caught the cable outboard of the engine so the whole package just "slid" off the end of the wing

If so, then it might have been a different story if it had been between the fuselage and the engine. They'd be dragging a balloon AND a parachute, with the cable sawing away at the leading edge . . .

[pilotmike]

Originally Posted by Sue Vêtements

They'd be dragging a balloon AND a parachute, with the cable sawing away at the leading edge . . .

I don't believe that at M0.8 anything would be dragging. Anything made of fabric material would be shredded and ripped from whatever it was attached to.

With apologies, adding a bit of gruesome detail to prove the point, clothes are simply torn off bodies when exposed to such airflows during high-speed aircraft break-ups.

The lightweight line (or 'string') between each component of the balloon system would simply be snapped if it were to be struck by the wing at cruising speed. Each component of the balloon system has mass, and therefore inertia, being stationary relative to the aircraft, putting immense loads on any bit of 'string' attempting to accelerate it almost supersonic by the passing wing in around 1 millisecond.

[B2N2]

I’ve had my not so near miss with one of those Walmart happy birthday balloons at FL410.
Valiant effort for what sells for $3.95
Close enough that I ducked.

[Sue Vêtements]

I read a lot of pilot biographies as a youngster and one was of a P51 pilot who IIRC entered the war late enough to be relatively safe, but the one injury he did suffer was when an attacking fighter got some shots in that were fairly close, just over the canopy in fact and he instinctively ducked - and knocked his front teeth out on the gun sight