Operation LOON. Could this help In the wildland world?

So there I was…yesterday in Mt. Shasta, enjoying a frosty adult beverage. Watched CHP H-16 extricate an injuired hiker from the MTN. and transport to town. Then a spot in the sky caught my eye. On the NW shoulder of Mt. Shasta, appeared to not be moving laterally. Based on the scale of the mountain it was tough to guage the size of the object. Wrote it off as a weather ballon.
Curiosity got the best of me. Using flight radar and the old Google… Here’s what I found.
It was NOT a weather ballon! Infact it was a newer technology still in development. HBAL271 was the identifier. Launched from somewhere in the Pacific ocean, traveling on the edge of the stratosphere, packing with it technology acting as a mobile cellular and data relay from ground based towers.:scream:
Owned by “LOON”, https://loon.co/technology/which is owned by “X”( Google project technology)IMG_20180722_160639,owned by “Alphabet”, ALL owned by GOOGLE.
Apparently the project launches or can launch from mobile lainchers every 30 minutes, creating a network of continuous service in a particular area that may not have cell or data service. Prooved successfully in Puerto Rico after the hurricane, providing service replacement from the balloons to 60%of users after infrastructure was destroyed.

All that long winded info…think of fires in areas without service. Me’s thinks communications could benefit.

4 Likes

I have known about this project for some years but never met anyone who used it in real life.

???

Interesting. I was up at Black Mountain Lookout on the Plumas national forest on Friday and saw a “UFO” (unidentified flying object). The group consensus was that maybe it was a weather balloon, but this post has me thinking it may have been LOON.

Take a look on flightradar24.

Air mass is pretty dominant from winnemucca towards the modoc.

Primary launch facility looks to be south of winnemucca near the Ruby’s.Screenshot_20180721-225835

So this is very interesting Stuff “LOON”. I was looking at Flightrader in January when my kids flew to Fiji. Cruised around the site looking at air traffic late at night. There were 4 balloons up on Flightradar. Two in Utah, one in Wyoming, and one in Idaho. Thought it might of been Military or weather or combo of both. Maybe it was “LOON” what are your thoughts.

I think its a good idea, especially in places that have really deep canyons. With todays automation and solar power, you could easily have a powered balloon that could hold position high up and be a repeater.

My brother in law worked for Aerostar in Sioux Falls SD. They make the envelope. Saw a few test launches at the Chico Airport a few yrs ago. 2 small solar panels and a radio package approx. 1/2 the size of a small P/U bed. They can bring it down and recover it on dry land and launch a new one. They tested is in New Zealand a few yrs ago. It can cover cell phones over 4 or 5 states. Normal alt. is 70,000’. Google Loon Project.

4 Likes

I remember about 5 years ago when I was a FOBS on some fires outside MacArthur, I spoke with some GIS folks on the incident who actually ran the old Hotlist. We were talking about the future of submitting GIS data from folks in the field in a real time fashion and they mentioned a project they were looking at that involved drones that could be launched over an incident, or section of an incident, and broadcast wifi/cell for units to connect to. I thought that was a pretty cool idea, aside from the fact that the whole use of drones on the incident would pose some issues. Pretty neat to see this type of technology developing. I can only imagine what will be available in 10 years from now.