It's not often that I lift off and take a picture of where I, at the end of my flight, land. Quite novel.
It's been two busy weeks so no blog was created. It was next to impossible to be coherent enough to put things down here. So now is the time to catch up a bit.
Let's go from last week and the Top Gun Rio Grande Classic. Three days of competition ballooning.
36 odd balloon Pilots showed up with their balloons and went for the top spots.
Long story short... what looked to be only one day of good enough flying weather turned into three days of great flying weather.
I have loaded up all 120 shots and a few more I thought were worthy on my website. That's day one only. That's from over a thousand shots... that day.
Yes, I had to go through all of them. Firstly, for the Top Gun Group, I selected about 70 from all three days. These were mostly baggie throws at targets as they are the most active shots in the bunch. After that, I did some of the outtakes. Over the last bunch of days, I started on day one, looking for the special ones or the interesting ones.
I did seem to get hooked on solitary balloons in blue skies centered perfectly for some reason I cannot fathom.. but they are cool.
You can go to my website and look at them all but below are some of my favorites.
https://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p714650324/ecd6b5bbc
One of the targets for the day. Measuring tape and clipboard.
Big Moon. Had a lot of shots of it all over.
The skies were crowded and the baggies were thwapping into the ground constantly.
Solitary Hopper. Just venting a bit as you can see the verticle wrinkles in the lower pat of the envelope.
Civil Air Patrol hard fling.
Cruising in ground track mode.
Zing Racers are tall!! Looked awesome up in the front of that cloud bank.
I am hoping to get the second day and maybe the third day done this week for next weeks blog. Overall a good competition and lots of winners and very happy people all around.
It took days to get back on a normal schedule... as we were waking up at 3am to get there, get briefed and get out to the targets.
This Saturday I got to fly Patturns In Czech. It was almost a bag as the winds kept creeping up. When I check in the morning they were reported at 7mph. At the field... nada. After a bit of time untangling everything after her annual inspection, we got up.
A couple of friends were out with their gear and surprisingly I was the first in the air. I normally wait for someone else to make that silly move... it was just really nice.
I had planned on launching then heading to the Northwest a bit then coming down and heading Southeastish.. but that went out the windows as the winds just above the ground were fast and way above real fast. So we cruised West a bit then went up and went North fast then dropped through a sheer that caused the basket to wobble a lot and the envelope to crackle a lot. We stopped a few hundred feet up and headed directly for a set of power lines. We got hooked by the electrical field and were drawn down them to the Southwest instead of Southeast like it should have been.
Going up a bit didn't get us unhooked so I gently dropped down and closer and the wind at about 50 feet above the wires was the Southeast and it pulled us off the lines effect. We dropped down after them and landed only to be bounced back into a choya. Said choya decided it liked my Ipad and left a branch stuck into the ottorbox rubber edging. We, at last, were able to stabilize and remove the prickly bits.
Up and off we went but then again the field caught us and we headed Southwest again. We did leave them as they jogged East and that allowed us to drop to just above the ground and ground track over and down a hill, over a cliff and land in soft soft sand of the big arroyo that is in the picture at the top.
Pack up was easy with the Kennedys lightweight soarcoat fabric and off we went in four-wheel drive back to the field. It was a great time.
Here are a few shots I had time to get. It was very hazy out with lots of dust in the air.
My friends that let me go first... so sweet!
We kinda looped around Burning Desire as we lifted. We have been in this position before and we know each other well enough to be able to be this close without worry.
A beautiful Lindstrand racer but 4000 sqft smaller than mine. I believe she is a 65,000 envelope.
More teams laying out behind us as it looks safe enough for anyone to get up in.
My instruments as we ascend to altitude were just chuckling along. .. until it decided to throw an extreme overtemp alarm out of nowhere. our max temp was 156 degrees. Super cool. I think my radio was too close.
Ipad tracking my flight. Not because I needed it but I track all my flights on it and its nice to see if I am going to be near any yellow or red zones. Love that ram mount. Do not love the bits of sand that drop out from the envelope above.
Rainbow Ryders head towards us at that fast North level. It looks deceiving as we were all higher than it looks there. Looking South and the escarpment.
Burning Desire looking hot against that fuzzy hazy background.
The lower winds were shifting to the South which is nice and all but I wanted a bit more time away from the Earth to erase my footprints.
Down and in the sandy arroyo. The envelope is being strapped tight because if you don't she will not fit in the bag. It was very sandy and I had it everywhere, shoes, socks, jacket. Reminds me I need to have a bit of heavy fabric stitched onto the bottom of the envelope bag as its getting worn.
My Lindstrand basket, age 8 years and 10 months looking super nice still. Resting in the sand itself. Probably enjoying the break from standing up all the time. My personally designed EXPERIMENTAL wrap on my upright. Need to modify the design here. I had another idea.
It was a perfect place to start making footprints on the Earth again.
There are only 124 days until the first day of Fiesta.
I have to do things!
Get new running boards for the truck.
Completely break down the basket and wash and clean and hydrate the wicker.
Download all the tracks from the 6040s and the iPad and log everything on paper just in case.
Prepare the garage for lots of ice, lots of soda, and lots of other drinks.
Other things I have to remember but can't now.
I did get a call to confer on doing a 360-degree video from the AIBF. I did a quick test via Youtube and here is the link to that just in case you want to see what video looks like that you can change your view at any time through.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VU-nQuIU6A
It's completely doable... I think it would be better in 4k and also with the software to edit it correctly... but it does work. Another thing I won't see a dime from! Time to start charging...
Overall the past week or so has been very quiet with little distraction... Not that that makes for restful un-insane moments and other strange and frustrating things but hay... quiet.
Hoping this next week and very quiet, very sublime, very restful.
I'll throw some restfulness at you too.
