Ballooning as Art?

I'm not sure I've seen it yet, but this is edging towards it. Of course it helps if you have a Digital Red 4K camera to catch real HD images (and you know how to use it I guess). I'm not entirely sold on the opening "atmospheric" scenes - I'm not sure they add anything to the narrative of the event apart from clever shots, there are a few handheld wobblers that you inevitably get shooting from a balloon basket but you use them anyway. The soundtrack gets "clicky" through my speakers when the bassline kicks in and I can't watch that lovely shot of the trailing streamer without thinking of "American Beauty" and all the inherent baggage that contains. But this is just the frustrated filmmaker coming out in me (and the editor who says he would have done a tighter cut). From a ballooning perspective, I'm not sure I've ever seen a burner test done before with the basket cranked over and the envelope laid out below it, but hey I wasn't there, so I don't know the circumstances. Sure looks weird to my eyes tho'. But I'm getting picky here - the images are absolutely stunning and are worth just watching - make sure you do it fullscreen, as they more than stand the "blow up" test.   

Hot Air Ballooning 4K from Patrick Lawler on Vimeo.

Adventures in Cappadocia

Or should that be misadventures? A salutary story about the inherent dangers of leaving your launch time until too late. I can't begin to go into the pressures involved with commercial ballooning as I have had only slight experience with it, but should you really consider taking off when everyone else is touching down? Were they in touch with the swarm of other balloons in the area? The poster of the blog doesn't point any fingers - I'm not sure I would be so patient. Read the full story here.

Not everyone has fun ballooning

A kind of scary/funny blog post about the joys of ballooning when you are maybe not always "up" for it:

http://ashleyolsonrosen.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/next-time-i-venture-up-up-and-away-ill-be-flying-on-valium-first/

But wait, there's more!

The great Clifton Bridge saga continues - this time with Daily Mail telling us how it was. Never let a lack of knowledge or information get in the way of a good story.  That is a great picture of the approach tho' (wonder if the guy made any money selling it to the hounds). Of course the only image missing is the one where 'The bottom of the basket just skimmed one of the suspension cables on the bridge'. Still, this will give people something to investigate for days, possibly weeks.

Beware the Splash and Dash in Britain

Shock horror as balloon dips in river! I would have thought that Aunty Beeb was above this sort of reporting.

The man who runs the suspension bridge (?) may have to investigate. My response would have to be that I was practicing precision landings. What could be more precise than trying to land on water?

ANZAC Day Flight Footage

Always nice when you can prove that it was you that took off in the balloon at least. Thanks to Geoff Mackay from Visualmedia, who was along once again to capture the action. Just to reiterate, that's me in the yellow balloon ZK-PUF (aka Puff the Asthma Balloon). The inflation was a little squew-whiff due to the envelope rotating a bit on it banners, but otherwise it went well. I'm definitely not in the Coke balloon. Just makin that clear okay.

Today I Talked to the Cows

And it works. Using the cow burner helps as well, with a gentle turn of the tap to avoid that initial "bang" as the huge volume of gas ignites all at once. They hear the voice and at least mildly associate the noise with their favourite food source. They did what they do - walk/jog just ahead of the flightpath to the fence then turn and amble back to the grass. The horses were all good - they've seen it all in the Wairarapa.

It was ANZAC Day morning and I had headed out from Wellington to Masterton for the now-traditional (it was the second year in a row they have done so) dawn flight over the town. I left the cloudy, drizzling city around 5:45am and headed north, about the same time as three RNZAF Iroquois were heading south along the coast over the hills to my left for their own dawn parades, one of which would not return to Ohakea. Stories abound elsewhere about this tragedy, so I will just quietly continue with my own tale. I must admit to thinking as I drove that Denis' weather prognosis seemed wildly optomistic, but as I crossed the Rimutakas and dropped down to the plain I was met with a fine dawn, with the sun bouncing a deep red off the bottom of the one large cloud hovering to the east. It would be a good morning for ballooning.

I arrived at the launchsite at the northern edge of Masterton just as the group of about 9 balloons were spreading out ready for inflation. As is my habit I rolled up to Puff and made my way to the top end and started putting in the velcro tabs in the parachute. Today however, balloonman Denis had a treat in store for me (did he know it was my birthday two days before?). Dan King was flying the balloon this weekend and after a quick word it became apparent that Dan would be my guide for my first flight as a pilot for a good few years. His instructions were simple: There's the big hole. Turn on the flames. Point the flames at the big hole. If the flames stop going in the big hole turn them off. The inflation went pretty well - things started a little squew-whiff (because of the big banners on one side Denis reckons), but it all got up there. The take-off was a little "hoppy" as I think I'd let Puff get a little cool while the balloon in front set up and took off. But according to those on the ground it was just fine and not nearly as ignominious as some others (which made for some tales at breakfast).

Puff is quite a responsive wee beast and with just four on board responded well to small inputs. The key was just keeping it in level flight, which I think I did reasonably okay. We went up a bit to see what it was doing, then down a bit to catch the wee smidge right we had on the ground. Although we missed the airport (which was the target - but then I think everyone missed anyway), there were plenty of nice large paddocks to land in, so long as you avoided the giant irrigation rigs. Which I did. After a bit of a duffer on the first attempt, we flew on to the next paddock and put it down with a single hop right in the middle after about forty minutes. The farmer was happy for us to land there, the passengers were happy with their flight and after a bit of a nervous start I had a grin from ear to ear. A couple of disclaimers however: during the flight Dan controlled the turning vents to keep me facing the right direction, during which I burned to keep level flight. And while I made a good approach on the landing, Dan controlled the smartvent to give us that nice "stop". A fine contraption the smartvent is and I hope to attempt to master it soon.  No photographs of the flight as I was a bit busy, but also no flight data as my useless phone decided it had the GPS abilities of a ninety-year-old Alzheimer sufferer.

Breakfast was the usual bang-up affair at the King's lovely property, during which we were treated to a close formation fly-by of a couple of Gypsy Moths. And by close I mean tight: with the trailing plane's wing tucked in behind the leader's, edging towards the fuselage and both chugging along at a steady pace. This was arranged for Pete apparently because he managed to fly directly over the cenotaph. We may have come close, but I was quite busy watching the skies around us. Anyway, after saying my goodbyes it was back home to Welly with a tale to tell for my lovely Sonnie and the boys. The spark is back in ballooning for me well and truly now after perhaps being a little lacking around this year's fiestas, including Levin. For my thoughts on the Levin event, check out the Lift Off Levin blog. For my thoughts about what goes on behind and around the Levin event, you need to come back here sometime, but maybe when I've cooled off a bit - possibly even deflated and put it back in the bag.   

       

Some Ballooning At Last!

Well sort of. The start of the Fiesta season in New Zealand began this year with the Wairarapa event this weekend past. Over the past couple of years the event has been run as a long weekend, from a Friday morning liftoff through to Sunday morning flight. This is down from its corporate-sponsored five day event, but it is a much better event for this. A much more relaxed feel to the event, without the need to pay the big-dollar piper makes this a lot more fun than it used to be. The flying is just as serious, but the bs on the ground is much less. Wairarapa turned on its usual mix of weather, from light and shifty on the morning mass ascension to just too much (for us anyway)on the Saturday and Sunday morning. A highlight for me as a crewie was being able to get the balloon landed on the trailer while still inflated on the Friday morning - any morning not having to lift the basket one more time is a good morning. The weird thing was that on the Saturday morning, the dawn wind dropped away, and quite a few balloons did a flight after breakfast - not unheard of, but certainly unusual. We were dealing with a few mechanical gremlins at the time, so left them to the thermals at that time of the morning.

It was great that the event finally got a chance to have a Nightglow after being completely and utterly rained out last year. It was a goodish crowd that gathered (maybe 5000?), and despite a fairly brisk breeze blowing up until sunset, everyone managed to inflate and put on a show. Blowed if I can find any photos of it online tho' (and I was too busy to take any of my own). I was a little backwards and forwards on the event this year - living in Wellington it is just close enough to commute, so I missed the Friday evening flight when I headed home, but I wasn't too disappointed. Even though there hasn't been an awful lot of ballooning so far this year, I am getting the feeling I am a little jaded already. Maybe it is being involved with the organising of Lift Off Levin that is taking its toll, or maybe even the lack of flying that I have done over the last while - being on the ground just ain't as much fun really. Well, Levin is only a couple of days away now, so I may get  the funk out of my system. Or maybe it's time to give it a rest for a while. That makes me a little sad to say that, but it has been ten years now, with a fair amount of fun thrown in with the frustrations. The simple fact is that I will not be able to afford to fly myself for some time yet, and until then I think I'm getting a bit long in the tooth to be a crewie. And to be honest, organising events just doesn't quite cut it really. It's a bit like talking about sex instead of, you know...

Ah well, let's get Levin out of the way and see where we go from there.