Let's Fly!

A balloon over Fishers, IN. 7/6/2021 dwm

 It's Hot Air Balloon Day, recognizing the first mode of transportation that lifted people into the sky. The first flight was in Paris during November 1783.

 203 years later, I got in the gondola of a balloon called Fire Fox for my first and only time in a hot air balloon. 

 At the time I was the news director for KJJC-FM, Osceola, Iowa in 1986 doing a 30-minute feature on the upcoming National Hot Air Balloon Festival held annually at the time in Indianola.

 I had interviews with local officials and representatives from the chamber of commerce about what the event meant for the community, but I hoped to capture in sound what it felt like to fly in a balloon.

7/6/2021 dwm photo

Balloons generally fly when winds are less than 10-miles-per-hour which is more likely in the early morning or early evening.

 

I met the person I was going to interview and a number of other people as two balloons were prepared for flight. The balloon is unfolded, then laid out on the ground before the end is opened and propped open while a fan starts blowing air into the envelope.

 

As it gets close to being full, the air is warmed with a a propane flame. The pilot and crew hold the lines on the balloon as they attach the gondola then anchor the balloon as the final steps are finished. 

 When the weights were placed in the basket, the pilot turned up the flame and we rose quietly, like an elevator, into the sky. The wind blows in slightly different directions depending on the altitude but the flight is determined by wind direction. 

 The Fire Fox climbed into the air where we could see the countryside and at another time the pilot dropped the balloon so the bottom of the basket was brushing corn tassels in the field.

 When we were done, other members of the balloon crew who communicated with the pilot with a walkie-talkie figured where they wanted to land, then the ground crew went to the farm to ask permission. 

 The interview over and the flight finished, after disembarking from the balloon, there was a ceremony where I was 'inducted' as a balloon flyer. Nearly 40 years later, it is still lives in color in my mind. 

There are two other lighter than air flight blogs as I checked my history. The first was published November 9, 2012. Here is the second, published April 14, 2014.