#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Some days ago, Taimyr Hatanga met a balloon with extreme aeronauts: Fedor Konyuhov and Ivan Menyailo set a world record for the distance of a balloon flight beyond the Arctic Circle. They spent two days in the sky.
On the flight’s first day, they overcame a difficult section of the route, which passed over the open Barents sea.
“On the left side of the board there was the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, Vaygach island. Desert places. At dawn they saw civilization, passed the villages. At 6:30, the pilots phoned the MCC via satellite phone and reported the situation. They use oxygen for breathing. The night was very cold. Severe frost. Each pilot is in two overalls, and they do not save. During the day they will try to ascend higher to increase speed. Overcame large and dangerous area above the open sea, now they are flying over the continent. Haven’t eaten anything hot yet since the start – there was no way to do it. They ask for praying”, the admins of Fedor Konyuhov’s Telegram channel quote the polar explorers.
Starting on March 24 in Kirovsk, the balloon at an altitude of three to six kilometers passed through the airspace of the Murmansk and Arhangelsk regions, the Nenets and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous regions and the Krasnoyarsk region.
On March 25, the balloon was observed in Dudinka and Norilsk. Having flown over the Putorana plateau, on March 26, the balloon landed on the runway of the Hatanga airfield.
In general, during the transcontinental flight, the PhosAgro balloon, piloted by Fyodor Konyuhov and Ivan Menyailo, covered a distance of 2540 kilometers. This is 174 kilometers more than the previous world record set in 1994 by Japanese pilot Michio Kanda.
Now, two world records at once – for the distance and duration of a non-stop flight in a thermal balloon – belong to Russia:
for the first time, a hot-air balloon flight with an open basket took place over the water area of the two seas of the Arctic ocean – the Barents and Kara;
the same flight became the longest in a hot air balloon above the Arctic Circle – the entire record distance lay in the corridor of 67-72 degrees north latitude.
Fyodor Konyuhov dedicated the record flight to the 20th anniversary of the all-Russian movement Education, Health and Spirituality for the Children of Russia, a key social project of the PhosAgro company, which became the general partner of the expedition. On its order, a unique balloon was made for a transcontinental flight, the shell volume of which is 12000 cubic meters. This makes it the largest in the history of domestic aeronautics.
“The maximum flight altitude was 5820 meters – at such an altitude, pilots must use oxygen equipment. The maximum speed is 109 kilometers per hour. At the balloon altitude, the temperature reached minus 35-40 degrees. This is a serious test for those who fly in an open basket”, the pilots shared.
This Is Taimyr previously told that on the same days, but by land transport, another team of polar travelers reached Hatanga, and then to the northernmost point of Eurasia – cape Chelyuskin on Taimyr, in one off-road vehicle, without the support of other transport.
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