I just installed my new antenna that I bought from the ADSBexchange web site. I was getting pretty good results with the 1/4 wave spike that I was using. When I installed the new 978/1090 antenna I was suddenly seeing balloons at 50k+ feet. Two of them off the coast of SoCal and one out 220 miles east of San Diego near Lake Havasu. I looked them up and they are WiFi balloons apparently sponsored by Google as an experiment to supply WiFi to rural areas. The bandwidth is pretty low at only 1 mbps. Pretty neat stuff. Not sure if it’s the antenna or if they just put those balloons up in the last day or two. So far I’m impressed with the antenna. Don.
I picked up a Google "Project Loon" balloon (HBAL227) on my 1/4 wave spike for the first time today as it floated across western MD into VA at ~56K ft. I'm also new to ADS-B (a week in), so I have no idea how common these things are around here, but I'd love to see if I could get a visual on one. Unfortunately, this one was ~30 mi from me (and above the clouds), so no chance to get a telephoto shot.
Agreed - they're pretty huge, but also are essentially big, clear bags. I've seen a couple telephoto shots online, which appear to have been taken when they were directly overhead on a clear day. I'm guessing a zoom lens or binoculars would be needed to make them out as anything other than dots. If anyone is interested in trying, the one I picked up has drifted down into NC. There are also six of them moving NE from Idaho into Montana, one over the Texas panhandle, and two more just crossed into the Gulf of Mexico from Louisiana (though those will be tough to spot given that they're right over the edge of a Cat 1 hurricane)
