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These covers are a hoax. No one knows quite where they come from but, they never flew on a
balloon nor commemorate an actual balloon flight. These covers as a hoax were documented in
Jack Knight Air Log, Balloon Post Specialist, The official newsletter of the Balloon Post
Collectors Club of the Aerophilatelic Federation of America, Vol 46, Nos. 3&4 (1989). Among
others Jim Winker, former Vice-President Raven Industries who built many of the high altitude
research balloons, did research regarding these covers. GHOST was an entirely and completely
a legitmate meteorological project. The balloons carried no payload other than an extremely
lightweight radio transmitter to provide temperature, pressure and location information. The
biggest problem with the "GHOST covers" is the date. The first flights were made in 1963 and
confined to the continental US. An International flight was made from Japan in April of 1964.
No GHOST balloons ever had a 3-letter ID, thus they could not have been named "JFK." No GHOST
balloons were ever flown from Ghana. The name GHOST comes from "The Global HOrizontal
Sounding Technique." Most of these covers indicated that they were flown over Ghana, some
name Nigeria, and at least one is dated Cypress, California. It is very unlikely that any
high altitude balloon would ever fly over Ghana and Nigeria, the jet stream comes nowhere
close to these countries. This is not to say that people would not want to collect them.
However, they should be made aware that these covers are a hoax. [Tom]
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