Has anybody messed with these?

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I use them to send beers to friends in Moscow. It's a hoot.

Sorry bro'. Lest you are dangling s'thing electronic with a desire to measure climate, I don't see the "toy" appeal.
 
Hrm... this kind of baffles me.

You don't exactly "fly" one of these like a hot air balloon where you get to keep it at the end of the day and unless someone really "calls in your tag" you send up on the balloon you are never even going to know where it landed. You basically release a taped together trash bag to fly somewhere and you'll never see it or hear about it again. I don't see the fun it... ?!

Plus seems kind of iffy to me as to legality... If these things can really fly at 30,000-50,000 feet they could interfere with air traffic, they could land in wildlife preserves, or water, and harm animal life, land on peoples roofs or lawns creating a hassle, etc. If nothing else it's "littering" in my opinion.

The really iffy ones are the "candle balloons" they have on their site - that is just a bad idea all together - let's burn down someone's house or start a forest fire so we can have the enjoyment of "flying" a taped together trash bag.

From their FAQ:
SolarBalloons said:
Is it legal to release these solar balloons? As far as we can tell...

In other words they don't have a damned clue... LOL
 
'Fun' is making a trash bag sized fuel rich oxyacetylene bomb connected to helium balloons, with a length of 2" masking tape as a fuse.

A small one, say a gallon ziplock one, sounds like a 500 pound bomb going off.

Even more fun watching the helicopter flying around looking for the expected devastation.
 
'Fun' is making a trash bag sized fuel rich oxyacetylene bomb connected to helium balloons, with a length of 2" masking tape as a fuse.

A small one, say a gallon ziplock one, sounds like a 500 pound bomb going off.

Even more fun watching the helicopter flying around looking for the expected devastation.

You lived in Tulsa about 7 or 8 years ago didn't you? Ha.

I lived next to an Ex-Military Explosives engineer then. 4th of July was always interesting. Nearly lost a window from the sonic boom of his festive contraption. IIRC, s'thing to do with a steel cylinder, fertilizer and Naptha.
 
Guess I'm doing my second childhood again.

I went through the basement bomber phase as a kid--hardware store chemicals for bombs and rockets and even still have all of my digits intact. Rocketry is a kick. I still have a small collection of super 8 (dating myself) movie footage taken with the old Estes Cineroc flown with F engines.

Nobody much cared what you blew up in the old days, as long as you did it well away from the sane part of society. :rockin:

+1 on the danger of candle hot air balloons. That's an arson waiting to happen.
 
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