Top Gear Caravan Airship update

Found it! Go here to view the two parts.

Am I becoming a bit much of an Airship buff?

This one is going on my list for the grand US visit someday. Some stunning photos of a trip with Airship Ventures over the San Francisco Bay Area from Bernard Zee. Check more of them out here.

More Top Gear Madness - Can't Wait!

The lads are at it again, doing what they do best - caravan bashing. And the boys at Lindstrand Balloons have come to help with their next "experiment".


Find more videos like this on Aunty Monkey


Can't wait 'til it's on the box here. Courtesy of the folks at Auntie Monkey.

Coffey and a Wake-up Call

So here it is, Breakfast's McCafe Great Coffey Road Trip on One (as also seen on the Lift Off Levin blog). Sorry about the jitters at the start, but it settles down. It was great to see a balloon taking part in the live crosses towards the end of the segments, but I can't help thinking we may have missed the boat/plane/train here. Earlier on in the programme the medieval market (the other big Levin event) had some kids dressed up in suitable garb and got its name and date in to the proceedings. We turn up on the day with a sodding great balloon, take the presenter for a ride, and still don't get a mention about Lift Off Levin. Methinks it may be an interesting committee meeting on Monday, as I think we needed to get a bit more info to the tele-types. I actually think we have committed the cardinal sin of providing plenty of entertainment without enough information. There are a few highlights for me tho':

• The kid on the right side of the balloon as it takes off has a handful of RJs Liquorice and fires them off and up to his right and very nearly into the burners....
• Paul Henry's comment about ejecting said kids during the flight to gain some lift at some stage...
• Nathan's fine job of trimming the tree on his way out - the camera pans away as it happens, but you can hear the snap and some definite movement of branches at the end of the shot.
  
  

It will be interesting to catch up on how the flight went and the possibility of a return trip for the Breakfast crew in Easter 2010.

Airships from another world (and another blog)

Okay, just one more crazy overseas story...

Ah the weirdness that the Google search results will sometimes throw up:

Bay City News Service
Posted: 10/24/2009 11:04:35 AM PDT
Updated: 10/24/2009 02:35:24 PM PDT

A bicyclist suffered minor injuries this morning when she rode into a line tethering a hot air balloon to the ground in Napa County, a Cal Fire spokesman said.

According to the spokesman from Cal Fire's Napa County unit, the woman encountered the tethering line stretched into the roadway as she was bicycling on Henry Road, at Dealy Lane near the Napa-Sonoma county line.

"She didn't hit the balloon, she hit the tether," the spokesman said. The woman was treated for minor injuries, he said.

Cal Fire did not have information on whether the balloon had just landed in the area. According to the spokesman, hot air balloon companies usually launch farther north and work with air currents. "They come down where they come down," he said.

The California Highway Patrol received word of the incident at about 9:30 a.m. Preliminary reports said the bicyclist injured her ankle and suffered lacerations to the neck, nose and hands, according to CHP Officer John Short.

Possible scenario: Woman riding bicycle along road. Oh, what's that? A balloon? It seems to be coming down. Fascinating. It appears to be falling down in my direction, so I won't take my eyes off it. There appear to be some people crossing the road in my peripheral vision dragging a rope, but I will continue watching this balloon very carefully and intently. Hey Lady! Look out!

Careful with those crown lines out there kids - sometimes crossing a seemingly empty road with it when you are deflating may seem like a good idea, but never underestimate the meandering abilities of the public. I don't think it was a "tether" line for a second. I do get a bit disheartened sometimes reading these things that appear to be second or even third-hand account of "incidents" that somehow pass for local news on third-rate (predominantly American) news websites. I guess there are others involved with special interest hobbies or sports that are equally despairing of the kind of coverage that they get. Ah well, hope the lady on the bike was not badly hurt.

All Quiet on the Flying Front

It is at this time of year that it seems like the most important thing going on is finding the perfect colour sceme to re-jig your blog with. Or just re-jigging your blog for want of something better to do. Not that you don't have something better to do, it's just that when it takes your interest it becomes all-consuming. Then, when you can't quite get it right, and the other templates you download just don't seem to fit properly, it doesn't. So you just kindof rehash what you have and carry on, realising that it has been absolutely months since you have actually contributed anything tangible whatsoever to the blogosphere. So, you ask eagerly, what has been happening? Lame.

On the ballooning front, the most recent foray was on a school tour to Featherston in the Wairarapa as a promotional exercise for the Asthma Foundation. It was a most excellent winter's day a couple of months back that allowed for inflations at the two schools in the one morning. In some ways it's great to be able to show the balloon to kids, but doing two inflations of a morning is of course twice as much work as actually taking a flight, so it was a decent workout. Pilot and ZK-PUF owner Denis Hall is currently off visiting in China, checking out various things, including the ballooning situation. I'm not sure if he caught up with this situation in China, as I'm not sure how much media gets around in those parts, particularly in English. As is always the case, when there is little going on in ballooning in this hemisphere, there is always something going on in the northern one. And of course with the media being the media, you are more likely to get stories like this one, where the news is all bad, if somewhat indecipherable.

And of course the other thing that inevitably happens in October is that behemoth on the ballooning calendar the Albuquerque Fiesta, along with the inevitable mishap that is going to happen when you get that many balloons together and competing. At least they got their special shapes back in time from China, but as always seems to happen, something happened:





Now I wasn't there, so wasn't able to clap eyes on the whole sequence, and I guess tipping your passenger over the side when hitting the tent would be a hell of something to happen, but whipping that top out from that height hardy makes it look like a controlled descent and would have been one helluva ride coming down. No one dead from this has to be a good thing.

On a personal note, the lack of distraction from ballooning has at least meant I have been productive in other areas, finishing producing a series of online videos for Skylight, the organisation where my lovely partner Sonja acts as Fundraising Manager. This was my first full HD project, done with volunteers and pretty much zero budget apart from tape costs (Sony HDV gear was borrowed). The videos are a series of interviews from young people offering advice to other young people about how to get through the tough times. It was fun to work on and produce, providing me with some real gifts in areas such as music (with some great Creative Commons track from the wonderful Josh Woodward), and certainly proved more uplifting than reading about balloon accidents elsewhere in the world. Enjoy.

The Depths of Winter...

Sometimes you get lucky and you get some flying in during winter. Often down this part of the world after a good Southerly blast the following days can be very calm and clear - which of course happened a few weeks ago when Denis headed up to the Hawkes Bay to do some flying and a schools tour with Puff. Five schools in two days is good going in anyone's book and I'm not sure I could have hacked the pace if I'd been there, but I had other things on, such as my lovely partner's birthday to celebrate. Puff went down a treat with the kids and apparently it was supposed to be four schools that they were to do, but a principal jumped out onto the road in front of them and demanded that they come to his school as well. The boys and the Asthma educator who was along for the trip were only too happy to oblige. Anyways, I missed out, but there will probably be some more flying on the near horizon.

In the meanwhile, it is an opportunity to scan the goings-on in ballooning on the wide wide world of web, particularly as things are in full swing in the other (Northern) hemisphere at the moment. The Aunty Monkey website is one that I have known about for a while, but I have finally added to my bookmarks as a place to go for interesting stuff from the ballooning community - although old hands are not always kind to the newbies, and the discussions can get a little out of hand, it is a great place to wander through and pic up ideas, like this guy with what seems like one helluva cloudhopper. Great way to start on a budget (and if you're single I guess).

Further wanderings lead me to other places (as they do) and just took me up another path completely. How about a new option for ballooning in New Zealand? Something with the impact of a special shape, but with wider capabilities than these or even classic hot air balloons? How about:


A hot-air airship? Okay, not as beautiful and slender as the helium or hydrogen airship, but a helluva lot easier to set up and move around. Cameron Balloons are the main movers in the manufacture of these puppies and they would make a sensational addition to any fiesta. Now I wonder how much it would cost to bring the first one into New Zealand? If you'll excuse me, I'm just off to buy a Lotto ticket...

Balloon Day

With a very scruffy night before, we weren't expecting great things out of Saturday May 9th to set up Puff to help celebrate the Asthma Foundation's Balloon Day celebrations, but it dawned clear enough to warrant going to have a look at the tether site at the Petone Mitre 10 Mega. It was windy when we arrived, but we waited it out, and while the wind did drop slightly, it was still just too wafty and shifty to do anything with the balloon. It eventually got to lunchtime and the carpark was starting to fill up and we were taking valuable acreage, so we had to can it basically. While other parts of Wellington were calm, in the prevailing (very cold) southerly conditions, the location was just a bit too close to the Petone foreshore and the wind that gets generated up the harbour. So once again Puff doesn't get to see another Balloon Day, but admittedly he still does a helluva job in the lead up to it by raising awareness. About the only person to get some ballooning action was Ziggy, who enjoyed clambering around the basket and helped to pack the balloon away. And he was definitely dressed in the right colours.

Well, It's Been a While

But if you really want to catch up on what's going on, check out the Lift Off Levin website, which keeps you updated on what's been happening in my part of the world with balloons. Or rather more to do with the balloon event that I was involved with over Easter. I was there for the briefings, inflating helium balloons to create a target at one of the events and generally running around watching balloons launch and fly off into the distance. Apart from the odd pull on a rope and the odd retrieve, I wasn't even really involved in crewing at all. I didn't even have a flight. I'm not complaining, it just felt a little, well, weird to not be entirely in the thick of it. It did mean that my partner and I and her two boys could just take in the Nightglow on the Saturday as just an event, wandering around the food stalls, jumping on the bouncy castle (the kids, not me) and taking in the glow from inside and outside the field. It didn't ever become the hot, sweaty and energy-sapping experience that working a balloon in the dark normally is. Part of me missed that, another part (the one enjoying the company I was keeping) certainly didn't.

As it was we were put to work the next night at the Basin Reserve Nightglow (sans kids this time) as my partner Sonja ran the crew on the gates and I finally got the gloves on. But even then I was just lending a hand to proceedings and still felt I could have been doing more. But it was still great to be in there taking it all in (and I did pull out and then replace all the waratah standards around the cricket pitch, so that counts as a bit of an effort). It was a magic sight on a magic Wellington evening.



So it has been about a month since then, so I have been filling in the time updating and honing the Levin Blog (and wishing I had the time and skill to update the god-awful Lift Off Levin website). During that time I also had a bit of a scoot round YouTube checking out other crazy ballooning stuff like this:



Although it did feel a little like I was killing time. So it was quite good when the Friday before last Denis gave me a call on another one of those eerily calm Wellington evenings to see if I could lend a hand down at the waterfront to put up Puff. Didn't really have to be asked twice. It was a good opportunity to raise awareness of the upcoming Balloon Day and a chance to grapple with the challenge of putting up the balloon in an unusual and limited space. It was also a frustrating exercise in how to figure out how to untangle a smartvent after the last people to pack the balloon away had somehow turned it inside out - it made me glad that I don't fly as part of a syndicate where I imagine this sort of thing (different er um ways of packing away) may well happen a bit. Anyway, it went up in the end and all looked good really, and was a good chance to get in some actual ballooning - even if we didn't get to fly.

One Week Out

Well, I'm getting my toys together ready for the big Lift Off Levin event. One cool feature that I can now add is a flight tracking from the cellphone via Nokia Sportstracker, which should give some interesting results from the balloon. Here is an example I got with some testing I did driving from work to pick up the boys at school.

http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/workoutdetail/index.do?id=811768

Can't wait to try it out on a flight now....

What The!!?? A Ballooning Rap?

I do recall seeing a cute little clip once with an old bluesman with his guitar and another guy singing along while in the basket. It kinda worked. But a ballooning rap? With the "crew" badly CGI'ed into the basket? Dope.

A Blip in a Balloon Fanned My Fiscal Fears

This Times Online article makes an interesting analogy between hot air ballooning and the financial situation. It fits more than he knows it. The best way to keep a balloon in good condition is by keeping it in level flight - not with rapid climbs and plummeting descents. It seems to me that people who own their own balloons understand this - those that fly them don't always (i.e., the pilot is not always the owner and this sometimes reflects the attitude to the craft in my experience). The steadiest flier succeeds in the long term by not racing skyward, as it costs just as much energy to come down. Something that those running businesses that are not necessarily their own have seemed not to understand.

Wairarapa Day 2 Evening

After a pleasant morning flight, it became clear as the day wore on that conditions were not becoming conducive to a possible nightglow. Being not quite able to have a snooze as is often the balloonist's habit after the early morning start, I felt the gradual change in temperature as the barometer must have dropped a few notches. A heavy shower at the briefing did not bode well, but crews duly jumped in vehicles and headed for the site - an amphitheatre arrangement just to the side of Queen Elizabeth Park in Masterton. It may have made a very nice venue for a glow, but we never got to find out because of an absolute deluge just before we were due to set up. The place just turned into a lake basically and that was the end of the event. While managing to avoid getting too wet, we headed back to our digs to review the situation. I did some weather forecasting and made a decision to head home early, as the continued southerly flow meant that the possibility of flying the following day was absolutely minimal.

Trolling around looking for stories about the event, I must admit to having a bit of a giggle at this little effort from the Wairarapa Times-Age. You don't expect such grandiose writing from a provincial newspaper - perhaps the scribe is suffering the slings and arrows of having to take his double major Journalism/Literature Degree out to some backwater and struggle with the burden of local news. Escher-esque "box wind" effect? Seriously? Not sure I saw any pilots flying upside down tho'. The marvellous part of this article is the balloonist interviewed lowering the satorial tone no end. Cheers Murray.

Wairarapa Festival Day Two Morning

The evening of Day One, a fly-out from the Gala at Wairarapa College, was a no-go, because as the day went on the wind picked up, making flying impossible. Waiting at the venue, when the wind dropped, the rain started and that sent us all scurrying for cover. We did later enjoy the hospitality of one of the locals at their fantastic house that seemed ideally suited to catering to a bunch of balloonists for an informal gathering/dinner/party. On the return home we could tell the sky was clearing, so were reasonably confident of a flying morning on Saturday. This turned out to be the case, with the hint of a box wind at Henley Lake allowing some balloonists a couple of cracks at the targets on and beside the lake. It didn't start off all that well, when, with passengers loaded we were awaiting lift-off, when another balloon that had already launched flew over from behind us - a not uncommon thing in this sort of event where launch times vary as pilots try different strategies. However, we were greeted by the very worrying sight of the bottom of the basket of the said balloon brushing the top of our envelope. This creates that sick feeling of a potential disaster unfolding - one edge catches and it was all over for our balloon. There wasn't a lot of shouting and arm waving going on, because that would have done nothing to change the situation. We just had to wait it out. Then, when it had passed, we breathed out and scanned every inch of the top of the balloon very carefully. All seemed well, so they were off towards the lake. Denis dropped it in for a gentle slide along the water - wish I had been close enough for photos, but the close proximity of the launchsite didn't really give us enough time to get lakeside for a closer look. But as an indicator of how good the flying was, check out Brenda Anderson's Flickr photos - all good stuff really. With the either-way steerage, we were then placed in a position of scratching our heads as chase crew as to which side of the main river we should be on. When Denis dropped down low, it looked to us as if he was actually on the river, so this made for a tricky choice, especially in a flat town like Masterton (yes, they were flying closer to the main town this time, and with the potential to gain a bigger crowd on a Saturday morning. Point noted). So a hint for all you budding balloon crewers in the Wairarapa: if you are having trouble finding your balloon, the highest point in town that affords a very good panoramic view is... on top of the rubbish dump. I don't want to know what was under our feet, but it was solid enough to drive up there and gave us a great view as our balloon sailed straight over, allowing for a crystal-clear analogue ground to air communication as to where the landing site would be. Translation: Denis told us he (or rather Jonty who was piloting at that stage) would be landing in the next paddock.


And that's where he landed. The flight ended as strangely as it had begun, with a one-sided encounter with a woman with four dogs (actually three dogs minus one), who was very upset that one of the dogs had bolted for home. But her manner was that of a dog itself - when I approached her she snapped and snarled obscenities without making eye contact and veering off course in the manner of the aggressive/frightened dog when I walked towards her to communicate with her and find out what the problem actually was. A case of the owner adopting the habits of the animal? Funny thing was the other three dogs seemed very pleased to see us and enjoyed a bit of a run around and some attention no end, until called over by their snarling "master" or "head dog". A weird end to bookend a very weird start, with a lovely flight in between. That's ballooning for ya. Weird.

Tethered sunshine

Tethered sunshine, originally uploaded by A Different Perspective.

This was probably just before I arrived to "help" on the first day. Our passenger, John the Stockmeister looks like he is coming to grips with things pretty quickly. Thanks to A Different Perspective's Flickr site for the image.

Wairarapa Festival Day One

There is something about the Wairarapa Festival that does not quite gel with me. Don't get me wrong, it's a great ballooning event - this is just a purely personal battle I seem to be having. When I have ventured down there from Hamilton in the past, it was often the weather that thwarted things (and I guess that wasn't just for me either). This year was almost entirely my own doing. Having "set" the alarm for some horrendous hour of the Friday morning, my intention was to gently ferry myself over the Rimutakas in time to help Denis and team set up for the Mass Ascension. That was the plan. The execution went something like: the alarm does not go off because it was not in fact "set". My partner Sonja rolls over and says something like "It's getting late dude" (Translation: it's still early, but too late to be getting up to drive 80-odd K's over some not-so-great road). Frantic phone call to Denis, frantic pack and then a semi-frantic drive over the hill (no point in killing meself right?), with a mercifully light traffic load see me reach the Clareville Showgrounds outside Carterton just in time to see the first balloon going up. Arriving at the grounds I am greeted by the sight of Denis' son Jonty hanging on to the crown line - I won't do him an injustice by saying nervously, but he did mention that it had been a year or so since he had done it last. Maybe tentatively is more the term - if you can be tentatively dragged along by a rope by something that can sometimes perform like a deranged collie as it inflates. It was quite nice to see someone else perform the deed actually.

So as they headed slowly for the off I had the opportunity to do a little camera work before heading off on the chase. The intention this year was to post updates on the fly, so I shot some footage on a horrendously low quality setting that could be MMS'ed to the blog. Despite various attempts it did not seem to want to work, so here is the video in all its blocky glory transferred from my home machine.

So there it was - a gentle waft away by everyone to the first target (except for Howard Watson, who flew up behind everyone and stayed just hovering above the launchsite where he eventually landed again - weird). After a quick review of my footage at the launchsite, I saw the error of my ways and upped the video setting for the 1st target drop. Because he was one of the last away, Denis was able to get a pretty good bead on the target, but after coming reasonably close they decided not to throw their marker as they were not in the same paddock. So here are some slightly less blocky pictures of the target approach...



Then it was a fly on towards the second target, but flying on the opposite side of the road to where it was located led Denis to pop it down in a paddock beside a farmhouse and a quick pack-up later and that was us for the day. Almost routine really.

But here's the rub - the Clareville Showgrounds just out Carterton have always been the traditional site for the Mass Ascension for this event. This is a kilometre or two from Carterton, with a population of just over 4000 people, so people can lug themselves out of bed from there without too much effort to get to the venue. However, the main town in the Wairarapa is Masterton to the northeast, with a population of just over 22,000. Anyone attending the Mass Ascension has to haul themselves 12 k's just to get to the event - and it shows by the number of people who turn up. And the flying itself in the years that I have been there have tended to occur out to the east, turning to the south, often missing even the town of Carterton and over open (and empty) farmland. This is great for finding a nice open landing spot, but hardly draws the spectators. Admittedly I was surprised at the quite a few that ventured from the launchsite to the first target drop, but by the second target the numbers had dwindled to the keen and hardy few who had the time to drive east and south to the next dropzone in a roadside paddock. Note the Wairarapa organisers: the huge advantage of ballooning is its ability to be done pretty much anywhere there is space. Why not take it to a space where more people are going to see it simply by looking up? Why make them get in their car and drive for 15 minutes? Let them discover it for themselves when they draw the curtains, then they can spent the 15 minutes taking in our fantastic sport, either by standing at the gate, or getting in their cars and driving to the nearby dropzone where they can appreciate the pilot's amazing flying skills on display.

A Little Warmup

A little Saturday morning flight of five balloons took off from Carterton on Saturday morning as a precursor to the Wairarapa Balloon Festival starting Friday March 20th. All good fun.




And a little close proximity flying is always a bit of fun




So Wairarapa here we come. Then onward to Levin.

One Month Out.

30 days to go and things are gathering steam! We're now on the Living Channel events website (http://www.livingchannel.co.nz/events.php?mid=4)! This is exciting for reasons I can't even begin to understand...
By the bye I am entering this post from the Quick Blog Gadget on my iGoogle page. While some of these little gadgets can be a bit flaky, affecting the page itself, it does create a useful one-stop place to keep tabs on what's a-happening in your virtual world. I'll be using this and other tools to keep you updated on Lift Off Levin as quickly as possible from the event itself.

Aand we're back...

What? It's only been four years. Hardly any time at all. Of course there has been a lot of flying between here and the last post. The reason for restarting the blog was to reflect on the changes of the last four years. For a start the old ZK-FBQ (or APW as it was known) has been replaced by ZK-PUF, or just Puff as he is fondly known, a Kavanagh 90 entering its third year of service as an educational and awareness tool for the Asthma Foundation (with a bit of help from some corporate sponsorship). Actually it was a bit of a hammers and handles arrangement; FBQ was sold to Levin pilot Nathan Murray, while ZK-PUF was the result of an older Kavanagh balloon that Denis had purchased combined with a new envelope. While the extra basket space of FBQ is sadly missed, Puff has done many appearances at schools and festivals, proving a bit easier to handle, as well as the regular round of New Zealand Balloon Fiestas, except of course at the Balloons Over Waikato event, where we are not welcome (this is a separate post all on its own, but suffice it to say that you cannot criticize the organising team at BoW for treating balloonists shabbily and expect to get away with it. Nosiree). It's probably just as well then that the Hamilton event is no longer my "home" event, as I am now living in Wellington with my fabulous partner Sonja and her two boys, Ziggy and Stone and a mad cat called Tazzie. Working part time has allowed me to spend more time helping out organising the event in the Horowhenua, now known as Lift Off Levin, and I have joined the committee to assist with that in any way I can. And the momentum is gathering: the event is scheduled for the coming Easter weekend, April 9 - 14, just over a month away. It will be our main flying event this year, as the Wairarapa Fiesta has been reduced to a three-day event as the economic squeeze has found it hard to gather sponsors for the larger events. We were hoping to take Lift Off Levin into expanded territory also, but the "r" word has meant we have to keep it in a holding pattern for this year and can just concentrate on running a successful and fun event.

A step back first. The seeds of this expansion plan were sewn at last year's event. The NewArtland documentary and setting up on the beach on Oriental Parade in Wellington gave Denis the impetus to realise that there were many things that local pilots wanted to try beyond the standard flying events and enjoyed flying or inflating in new places.


Another event that further fertilised his active mind was a promotional exercise for the Asthma Foundation just prior to Balloon Day, where he (in Puff) and Chris Bransgrove in Remax inflated on a wide pier at the Viaduct in Auckland. 

View Larger Map

It made the New Zealand Herald, so was a very successful enterprise. It went kind of like the clip below:




Armed with this experience, Denis set about developing the idea of a balloon tour to be added to Lift Off Levin, making its way up the North Island, stopping and flying at various locations (including re-experiencing ourselves with Taupo), culminating in a Nightglow in Auckland. As it was coming together I arrived on the scene in Wellington, so was able to help out with the promotional material and we set about seeking sponsorship for the zero gravity tour. This included forwarding a DVD of our previous and planned exploits to potential sponsors.




But then of course things slowed down a little - okay, a lot. With the funding set for Lift Off Levin, and without a major naming-rights sponsor to back the tour, it was decided that we should do what everyone else was doing: tighten the belt another notch and steady-as-she-goes. That's not to say that there won't be some fun and excitement at this year's event - there is already another exciting little side trip to Wellington planned. More news soon.