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. 

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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.

Taupo in the Springtime

But Wait There's More!

Just when you thought the organised side of Hot Air Ballooning in New Zealand had finished, a kindly promotions board organises a Nightglow to be held in the depths of winter. Not that we're complaining - there will be a small gathering of us at Taupo on Saturday August 16 to put on a bit of a show for the folks down by the big lake. Fingers, toes and everything else are crossed for the weather at the moment. We'll keep you posted.