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.

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.

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...

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.

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.