The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert

To reduce the effect of varying fluid heads and a corresponding variation in valve calibration, a ballast reservoir mounting was devised to limit the head values. This ballast reservoir, after several modifications, consists of a spun aluminum tank with filter, mounted on 18-inch legs. It is shown in Figure 15. The legs serve as supports for the other control units and a head of at least one foot is provided by tubing to the automatic ballast valve. The capacity of the reservoir is approximately five gallons. Figures 16 and 17 show the complete ballast release assembly.

One other system of altitude control may be mentioned. This is the method used by Korff and others to roughly approximate constant level flights for cosmic ray investigations. A number of meteorological balloons are inflated until they will just support the flight load. A few other balloons are added to the train to give a free lift appropriate for the desired rate of rise (see Computations, Section 3). At some time after release these "lifter" balloons burst due to over-inflation, or are released by a pressure or time-activated mechanism. If the original balance was correct, and the effects of superheat and diffusion cancel each other, the cluster of cells may float. When one or more of the balloons breaks, or leaks excessively, the train will descend. Although this method was used in early experimental flights it proved to be useful only as a stop-gap method of carrying gear aloft for test purposes. No modification of this basic technique seems likely to produce even a consistent flight pattern due to the uncertainty of properties and behavior of these inherently unstable balloons.

## C. Altitude Determination

In order to evaluate the performance of the basic control apparatus, an investigation of pressure-measuring equipment and telemetering gear has been made. The problems of measuring upper-air conditions in general