Helikites are, without doubt, the best tethered aircraft for weather monitoring.

 

They significantly contribute towards improving climate change modelling and can fly in very high winds which overpower all other aerostats. This enables scientists to generate data for atmospheric research whenever they wish. Before Helikites, this was impossible and huge amounts of data were simply not collected.

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Tethered Helikites for exceptionally accurate measurements

 

Each tethered Helikite allows weather instruments to be placed very accurately along the tether to facilitate excellent boundary layer measurements. This can lead to improved local weather forecasting.

Even the smallest of tethered Helikites can fly thousands of feet high – well above the capabilities of other types of tethered airborne platforms of similar size. This enables many areas of the sky that could not be reached before to be sensitively and persistently measured. Previously, getting to this part of the sky for extended periods required an expensive manned aircraft that would also heavily disturb the atmosphere, making some measurements (such as cloud droplet monitoring) difficult to collect accurately.

 

Nowadays, drones and fixed wing UAVs often take weather measurements, but electric drones have a very short endurance, and larger gasoline drones are expensive and often dangerous or illegal to operate in certain places.

 

Where can Helikites be launched from?

 

Smaller sized Helikites can be kept inflated on the back of a car then flown high into the sky within a few seconds. Larger Helikites can be flown from the ground, trailers, pick-up trucks, boats, and ships. Helikites can be flown safely in many places banned for drones, and air traffic permission is normally easily given for very high altitude, long endurance Helikite flights.

 

Thanks to a lack of rotors, Helikites do not disturb the air surrounding them, thereby allowing the best possible sensitivity for atmospheric measurement. This is, of course, critical for many research opportunities.

 

Helikites significantly expand the possibilities and boundaries of airborne research and aid climate predictions.