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The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert was published by Headquarters United States Air Force in 1995. The Black Vault distributes this copy. It reproduces the report by Col. Richard L. Weaver and the synopsis by 1st Lt. James McAndrew, both written after a General Accounting Office inquiry requested by Representative Steven Schiff. The Air Force search found no evidence of an extraterrestrial craft or crew. It concluded that the Roswell debris most likely came from NYU Flight No. 4, a Project MOGUL balloon train.
“Headquarters”32 pages
which switches four elements into the transmitter circuit in turn. Recently a motor making five revolutions per minute was used so that each temperature is transmitted for three seconds. The four elements are the free-air temperature, the gas temperature, battery-pack temperature and a reference signal. This switch is supplemented by a master program switch which alternately places the temperature switch and the pressure modulator into the transmitter circuit. The present arrangement is to permit the temperature data to be transmitted for about one minute in every fifteen. In this way representative temperature sampling may be obtained, without materially destroying the continuity of the pressure and ballast data. A second system of determining temperature makes use of the smoked drum of the barograph. By adding a temperature-activated pen, this unit makes a record of the temperature encountered. Since it is not the free-air temperature nor the temperature of the lifting gas but rather the temperature of the barograph itself, the data obtained has been of little value. Following the development of suitable temperature telemetering apparatus, this method was not used. ## C. Ballast Metering It is often very desirable to know whether or not ballast control equipment is operating properly during flight tests. For this purpose, two systems of ballast metering have been devised. It is possible (1) to record on an instrument which is balloon-borne or (2) to detect and telemeter information to the ground concerning ballast flow. Figure 37 shows the automatic siphon which has been used in the AM-1 transmitter circuit for the telemetering of such information. A series of pulses of fixed frequency is transmitted whenever the contact arm of the automatic siphon is filled above a critical level. The electrolyte used is non-miscible with the ballast and rises and falls in proportion to the rise and fall of the main arm of the siphon. This main arm empties when approximately 3.5 grams of ballast have been allowed to flow into it. As a consequence of this intermittent filling and emptying of the lines of the siphon, an intermittent signal of fixed frequency is transmitted whenever ballast is flowing steadily. It is important that an electrolyte be used which will not freeze at low atmospheric temperatures and will not boil at the low pressures encountered. After a series of tests it was decided that a 24% solution of hydrochloric acid be used for altitudes up to 85,000 feet. It is necessary to use platinum wire for the contact points. In order to record in flight the functioning of the ballast control system a ballast recording mechanism has been developed in conjunction with the Lange Laboratories of Lexington, Kentucky. This
Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 882 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.