Near miss report’s to the CAA by pilots. What makes me laugh is the descriptions ‘could have been a balloon or a drone’ like they look similar. Doh!
The best one is ‘balloon or egg shaped drone’. What! 
If they don’t know what it is it’s a UFO
Powervision Poweregg 
A number of weather balloons are released in the UK daily. One place was Fizakeley(?) near L’Pool…a met station…not sure if it stll in ops use…these balloons are around 1-2 metres in diameter and usually white and carry a small box made similar material as an old type paper egg carton contining a small instrumentation package transmitter for various met readings. RAF also release these balloons.
… Drone😁
1 Like
That a play on the scouse accent or genuine miss spelling 
… Fazakerley
1 Like
On the radio the other day, someone from the US military said that they have been unable to understand what some of the things were that they have shot down.
They went on to say that even at its slowest, when a fighter jet flies past one of these items they don’t really have time to work out what it is.
It’s strange that when a commercial airliner flies past something, that can confidently identify it as a drone!
2 Likes
Ye/I was unsure and too lazy to look it up!
Balloons are certainly a popular subject over the last week or so. It might surprise some folk how many are up there, and who are launching them.
There is a resource similar to Flightradar24 solely for tracking balloons.
Here you can track balloons launched by research organisations and radio amateurs. Here’s a screen grab of the current balloons launched by radio Hams.
It’s interesting to see that a balloon originally launched by an American radio ham is currently flying over Russia. These balloons carry small UHF transmitters that transmit a protocol known as WSPR (Whisper), which stands for Weak Signal Propagation Report. It’s very low power transmission of a very slow data rate signal, it takes two minutes to send just the Call sign and location.
So it is very likely that what pilots are reporting as Drones are in fact balloons.
2 Likes
You actually spelled it the way a scouser would of pronounced it👍
Exactly 
If in doubt it’s a drone
1 Like
A balloon shaped one🤣
“Would of”? I think you mean “would’ve”, alternatively “would have”. Picking up one poster for mispelling a place name he’s not familiar with is one thing, but people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
1 Like
Triple glazed me mate, proper
Wernt reely pullin 'im fur a spellin mistake, I reely fort he spelt it the way a scouser prunownces it👍
2 Likes
it it doubt shoot it down… preferably not over water as it takes longer to confirm what it was…
one we know what it was we can then bundle it up and return to sender… only took 100 years for royal mail to deliver that letter sent first class delivered a couple of days ago…
surprised it didn’t have a sticker on it asking for more postage…
that sondehub site is quite interesting, I was amazed to see how many balloons were in the air (the known / identified ones). but also the frequency of launches from places such as larkhill where I saw a balloon travelling past Eastbourne at quite high altitudes on a descending trajectory… not surprised at airline pilots seeing something…
stuff being launched at 00:00UTC, 06:00UTC and 12:00UTC at different sites… I did not know that we sill needed balloons like this.
How are the CAA policing them?
2 Likes
In the UK you have to notify and obtain permission from the CAA 28days prior to the launch.
Well, that’s at least one of them. Probably. 
Haha, read about that this morning, typical Yanks, Gung ho to the last😂.
The thing is, that was ‘just’ a missile costing 350 grand. Once they have them lazers properly sorted out, it’ll be like a scene from Star Wars…every damn unidentified object in the sky will get wasted, and for less cost 
1 Like