Unfavorable weather has halted a planned trans-Atlantic balloon launch from Aroostook County.
An international balloonist team recently put its plans on hold when members couldn’t find a window of prime wind and weather conditions for the Torabhaig Atlantic Explorer flight. They planned to launch in September but were still discussing weather earlier this month on the Explorer website.
Weather didn’t give them a window to make the trip, compounded with dwindling daylight hours, one of the balloonists, Sir David Hempleman-Adams, told the BBC last week.
The attempt would have been the first trans-Atlantic flight in a hydrogen gas balloon. The team chose to launch from Presque Isle because of its northern location, but also in honor of the 1978 Double Eagle II trans-Atlantic hot-air balloon flight.
The effort ties together a whisky distillery on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, the international pilot team and Presque Isle photographer Paul Cyr, who offered his land for the launch.
“They’ve postponed until early June next year,” Cyr said. “They had a pretty lengthy report as to why it didn’t happen. It was all to do with weather.”
Ironically, with all the rainy weather Maine and The County have experienced this summer, a spate of mild weather in early October finally canceled the flight.
During that period, there wasn’t enough wind in Maine and New Brunswick, Cyr said. Winds were so slow that it would have taken the balloonists more than three days to cross New Brunswick. With the entire trip and specific flight path carefully calculated to last five days, they couldn’t have afforded that slow passage toward the Atlantic Ocean.
The flight was to leave Presque Isle, soar over New Brunswick and Newfoundland, cross the Atlantic and over Ireland and Scotland before reaching Europe.
Meteorologists working with the team had thought September or October would provide optimal conditions, but tropical storms dashed those hopes, Kevin Stass, a British air and hot-air balloon pilot on the Torabhaig planning team, posted on Linked-in.
Pilots Bert Padelt, 62, of Pennsylvania and Hempleman-Adams, 66, joined by Swiss scientist and explorer Frederik Paulsen, 72, will make another attempt next spring.
The flight is sponsored by the Torabhaig (pronounced TOR-a-vague) Distillery of Skye, which Paulsen’s daughter owns. While in flight, the team will sample air at different altitudes to look for new microbes that could benefit medicine, agriculture and other sciences, according to the Atlantic Explorer website.
Local members of the Aroostook County Composite Squadron Civil Air Patrol also joined in the planning effort.
Whereas hot-air balloons are powered by heated air from a propane burner, hydrogen or helium is sealed inside a gas balloon, with flight controlled by the sun’s heat and removal of sandbags. The Explorer will carry 160 sandbags weighing 30 pounds each, Padelt said in August.
The balloon team is storing some of its gear on Cyr’s property. Hosting the group and learning about the multitude of factors involved in planning a flight was fascinating, Cyr said.
A team of meteorologists kept track of weather conditions and trends from around the globe, relaying information to the team in Presque Isle, he said. With complex tools and analysis, forecasters could predict the wind’s path from the ocean to points on land.
Cyr looks forward to the team returning, and said spring could provide some of the best weather, since it’s before summer heat and hurricane season. He’s learned much about ballooning and how complex a flight can be.
“It’s been quite an experience,” he said. “It’s quite the art.”
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