By Casper

One afternoon around teatime I saw a big white balloon flying by. So I asked what it was, and at that time Paul & Suzette were on a visit to say hello and Paul said it was one of the Met balloons. They send one up with a reflector every day at two o’clock to measure the wind speed and wind direction.
The next day when we were walking back from Ricardo the welder who is fixing our boom my Dad suggested: that Alex and I go to the Met station on the way down and get a copy of the daily weather fax. When we were in the building this friendly man came by and took us in this office where there was a barometer and lots of computers. While he printed the fax we asked if we could come back at two o’clock and launch the balloon. And he said yes.
So when we came back at quarter to two we found him in the office and he showed us around the building: The big barometer, the alarm lights, the field where he had some instruments and the workshop. When we were in the workshop I saw that someone was preparing a reflector, a metal wire frame and some silver foil attached to it. After a while it was time to tie some string to the reflector so later on we could tie it to the balloon.
When the reflector stuff was done we walked across the street where they have all there instruments to track the balloon and fill it up. We filled up the big white balloon with helium and tied the reflector to it. When they finally got the radar and the printer and the tracker going they told us to launch the balloon so my brother and I let go and it got caught on my T-shirt. After the balloon was launched the printer had some failure so we had to do the process all over again. But this time it went right and we thanked the generous people and headed back home.

By Alex

One afternoon I saw this big white balloon flying by with some silver foil underneath, and my Dad said that every 2 o` clock in the afternoon the met station (which is short for meteorological station, where they study the weather) launches a balloon with a radar reflector.
So, the next morning when my brother and I went to the met station to collect a weather fax for my Dad, we also asked if we could help prepare the balloon for the 2` o clock launch. I was really excited when a friendly guy who works there said it was OK.
After we gave the fax to my Dad, we went back to the met station. When we got there, the friendly guy told us about hurricanes and that not long ago a planet passed in front of the sun and he also showed us 2 barometers. After that we went to make the radar reflector so that they can track the balloon and then see what the wind speed and direction is. We made the radar reflector by gluing pieces of silver foil to a wire frame. Then we went to fill up the balloon and Casper and I carried it out of the building and let it go. It went up really fast! But the radar lost track of it, or maybe it was the printer that didn’t start in time, so we did it all again and this time it worked!