roswell

PROFESSOR MOORE - 6/8/94 15
June 4th, "Out to Tulerosa Range and fired charges between
o-o and o-6" something. "No balloon flight again on account of
clouds. Flew regular sonobuoy mike with cluster balloons and had
good luck with receiver on ground but poor on plane." I think
that's Flight 4 right there.
Q: so that's June 4th.
A: As to that flight made by Mirs and Hackman earlier, we
have no record of it here in the NYU summary.
Q: If he flew that on June 4th and it carried the
microphones, the radar reflectors, that would have been with a
neoprene type balloon.
A: There were no plastic balloons delivered until the 28th
or 29th of June that year. So everything as evidenced on the
Helgeland flight that we made and the other flight, they were all
meteorological balloons prior to late June.
Q: That would have also had the B Model reflector, this
type of reflector, but the B Model?
A: My memory is that Jim Peoples, because we were being
sent down by B-17 and by air, didn't let us take the radiosonde
receiving equipment which at that time was very heavy. It was
like a 500 pound rack with a receiver, frequency meter, recorder,
etc., and we weren't allowed to use that. Instead, the idea was
that Peoples would provide tracking on the balloons with radar
targets and so on. So this is where I think the radar targets
come in. If you look in these reports you'll find here
statements, radiosonde reception, and you'll see 60 percent with
recorder, so percent without recorder, 100 percent without
recorder for June 5th. A hundred percent without recorder.
so I think we tried the radar targets, as I remember, our
contact who was a Captain Larry Dyvad found that they weren't
able to track our flights at all. They had a radar that was
entirely aimed at looking at the missiles. To look at slow
moving balloons with poor signal return was difficult for them.
So we started off with making single target flights. I think we
went to multiple target flights, and still didn't have any
success, so I began putting radiosondes and then just audibly, as
the tones would change, I would log it on a piece of paper. I'd
count the pressure... Are you familiar with radiosondes?
Q: Somewhat.
A: The commutator with the pressure contacts, etc. I
would count contacts and record it and you'll see in some of
these flight reports, there's two different interpretations
possible, depending on what the contact sequence was. An
ordinary radiosonde is very good for something that's going one
way. But for something that's going to go up and float, you can