What was lost, is now found. I reported yesterday that Pico Balloon AA6DY was MIA, Missing in Action. We had last heard from AA6DY on November 1st, and going by our NOAA Hysplit Model, we thought AA6DY would be near Shanghai, China for wake up today.

AA6DY came back from the missing, reporting on November 4th, 00:02 UTC at Grid PM75. At 00:24 UTC we received Grid PM75MP, North of Osaka, Japan with an altitude of 14,900 meters, 48,872 feet.

The altitude of 14,900 meters, may be a new record for us. The reports we’re receiving are showing a range of altitude from 14,900 meters to 13,840 meters. While trying to get an explanation of the wide swings of altitude, I went to Ventusky and found that AA6DY is traveling in a Jetstream at 180 miles per hour. 180 mph is probably the fastest I’ve seen our balloons travel. One of the pages on our website is called Locate and Track, here is the hyperlink Locate and Track

Locate and Track has the NOAA Hysplit Model for 84 hours, Ventusky for wind speed and direction, APRS for both balloons and Sondehub for tracking other Pico Balloons around the world in flight. Ventusky is best seen on a computer screen, hovering the mouse or pointer in the area will show the wind speed at the balloons reported altitude.

Looking at the NOAA Hysplit Model will show the Longitude and Latitude. Pluging that in to Gridmapper (also on our Locate and Track page) will give you a map of our projected location at a given date and time and our “Best Guess”

We’re excited to be tracking AA6DY, now after 61 days and 13 hours of flight and two times around the World. The NOAA Hysplit Model shows AA6DY heading east and then hooking around to the Marshall Islands around November 7th, our “Best Guess”. We’ve been around the Marshall Islands many times before including AA6DY’s last trip around the World.

K9YO woke on November 3rd 2022 at 22:20 UTC at Grid RN50FB, Northeast of Tokyo, Japan over the North Pacific Ocean, traveling at an altitude of 12,660 meters, 41,525 feet.

K9YO is on a fast track with the general direction heading east. Our “Best Guess” is that K9YO will be making the 2nd lap around the World around November 5th and be south of Greenland around November 7th. Pico Balloon K9YO is now on 24 days and 9 hours of flight.

The NOAA Hysplit Model link seems to have a short life span of one day. As long as our balloons are reporting, we’ll be updating these links.

As our balloons are heading east, we will be seeing earlier wakeups, till tomorrow. 73, Cary KD9ITO