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To: SliderOnTheBlack who wrote (28605)	8/30/1998 1:13:00 PM
From: Big Dog	Respond to of 95453

OT and lost in the ozone: For those of your smart ODB newsletter subscribers, here is more details on the balloon that kept the Dogfather grounded in Paris on Friday. 08/30 10:27 Runaway balloon escapes U.S. military, disappears By Bernard Scudder REYKJAVIK, Aug 30 (Reuters) - A runaway weather balloon as tall as a 25-storey building and threatening civil aviation entered and left Icelandic air space on Sunday after defying efforts by aircraft from three nations to track and down it. In the latest episode of the chase, a U.S. maritime surveillance plane was dispatched from Iceland to look for the unmanned, 300-foot-high (100-metre) balloon using radar, but failed to locate it and finally returned to base. "An Orion P-3 was launched at 0922 GMT and went 823 nautical miles north-northeast of Keflavik but turned around at 1220 GMT," Lieutenant Carla McCarthy, public affairs officer at the U.S. airbase at Keflavik in Iceland, told Reuters. "The radar they were using was for surface searching and they weren't able to detect the balloon in the air." She added that, given prevailing winds, it might soon be in Norwegian air space. The U.S. military at the Keflavik base have now abandoned the search for the balloon, believed to be drifting north of Iceland. Observers said it was a matter of time before it would reappear on radar screens somewhere as long as it stayed aloft. The balloon, which if deflated would cover an area equal to five football fields, broke out of control after being launched on Monday from a site near Saskatoon, in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan, to measure ozone levels. The helium-filled balloon remained airborne despite attempts by jet fighters to shoot it down. Commercial air traffic had to be re-routed over the North Atlantic, Icelandic air traffic controllers said. However, now that it had disappeared from radar screens there was little that could be done. "Our search went over 300 miles beyond the area that the military is responsible for and at this point there is nothing more we can do," McCarthy said. The balloon disappeared from Icelandic civil aviation radar at 0120 GMT when it was 220 miles north of the northwesternmost point of Iceland and its whereabouts can only be estimated. "On the basis of prevailing wind conditions and estimates of the balloon's course, some time later this afternoon it should arch back towards the south and enter Norway's air space," McCarthy added. The balloon remained aloft despite attempts by jet fighters to shoot it down. Two Canadian CF-18 fighters fired more than 1,000 cannon rounds at it off the coast of Newfoundland on Thursday. Squadron Leader Chaz Counter of Britain's Royal Air Force said two RAF Nimrod aircraft had shadowed the balloon earlier in the day before a U.S. Orion plane took up the chase. Britain's Civil Aviation Authority reported delays in transatlantic air traffic as airliners were forced to divert from their projected flight paths.