{"id":49309,"date":"2023-02-17T09:14:28","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T14:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=49309"},"modified":"2023-02-17T09:14:28","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T14:14:28","slug":"i-couldnt-make-this-up-if-i-tried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=49309","title":{"rendered":"I Couldn&#8217;t Make This Up If I Tried"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday, <a href=\"https:\/\/aviationweek.com\/defense-space\/aircraft-propulsion\/hobby-clubs-missing-balloon-feared-shot-down-usaf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Aviation Week<\/a> reported the following:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>A small, globe-trotting balloon declared \u201cmissing in action\u201d by an Illinois-based hobbyist club on Feb. 15 has emerged as a candidate to explain one of the three mystery objects shot down by four heat-seeking missiles launched by U.S. Air Force fighters since Feb. 10.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>The club\u2014the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB)\u2014is not pointing fingers yet.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>But the circumstantial evidence is at least intriguing. The club\u2019s silver-coated, party-style, \u201cpico balloon\u201d reported its last position on Feb. 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska, and a popular forecasting tool\u2014the HYSPLIT model provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)\u2014projected the cylindrically shaped object would be floating high over the central part of the Yukon Territory on Feb. 11. That is the same day a Lockheed Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and altitude in the same general area.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>There are suspicions among other prominent members of the small, pico-ballooning enthusiasts\u2019 community, which combines ham radio and high-altitude ballooning into a single, relatively affordable hobby.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>\u201cI tried contacting our military and the FBI\u2014and just got the runaround\u2014to try to enlighten them on what a lot of these things probably are. And they\u2019re going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down,\u201d says Ron Meadows, the founder of Scientific Balloon Solutions (SBS), a Silicon Valley company that makes purpose-built pico balloons for hobbyists, educators and scientists.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I have nothing to add.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday, Aviation Week reported the following: A small, globe-trotting balloon declared \u201cmissing in action\u201d by an Illinois-based hobbyist club on Feb. 15 has emerged as a candidate to explain one of the three mystery objects shot down by four &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=49309\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16286,16289,16287,16288],"class_list":["post-49309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aviation-week","tag-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration-noaa","tag-northern-illinois-bottlecap-balloon-brigade-nibbb","tag-pico-balloon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49310,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49309\/revisions\/49310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}