> I think the last time that the Loon project item was posted here a lot of the same comments were made. I think it was verified that they are flying at the 60k

> I think the last time that the Loon project item was posted here a lot of the same comments were made. I think it was verified that they are flying at the 60kft - 90kft range where the winds are typically mild and in the 20mph range. From the article: "In the same time it took the Earth to complete half of its annual orbit of the sun, our record-breaker managed to circumnavigate the globe 9 times, [...] soaring to a maximum height of 21 km and drifting over more than a dozen countries across 4 continents." So the maximum altitude reached was 21 km. Also, won't increasing the antenna size on the balloon enable reception of a weaker signal? Although the antenna size increases by a factor of πd^2, where d is the distance between sender and receiver. So an antenna 80 km away needs to be 64 times larger than an antenna 10 km away in order to compensate for the weaker signal.