It was an awesome day to fly. We delayed a bit hoping that the RUC winds would show up. They didn't. I was a little slower getting off the ground than most but not the last one in the sky..Not that that matters at all. I was in a fussy mood anyway. We had wedding party friends to fly so we did. 5 and so we had to do a hop in there somewhere.... Not that we were going to have it easy to locate a spot to set down and take off again at. Turns out that dropping out of that calm area gave us a good push to the West and what looked like a more South Easterly push didn't show up. Last minute a nice park came in front of us so I bombed in and bounce twice with a skip. When you vent a racer that close to the ground you are not going to recover it to softly set down unless you like zipping right back into the air. You gotta do the do and plant it.. which I did. A bit bumpy but it was fun.
We stopped exacly where I wanted to be in case the winds came up. We swapped passengers and also saw Bob come into the same field to do the same. he swapped out and went up and off.. I did the rocket thing and zoomed up at about 600/800 fpm ( slight tilt on the envelope as we did.. and you could really feel the push of the basket bottom against the feet ) Sweet. A hoot. We just went up and got over Bob and farther West then let the balloon settle and slowly come down and over some power lines.. wave at a friend and his balloon in the field below then wandered South looking for a spot to land.
As usual the choices were some heavy ground moving equipment, a huge trench or some light poles. We too the poles but went in next to them with my son jumping on to stop us nicely. It all worked so well and in the end and an easy pack up because of all the great people that were able to drag themselves out to be so helpful... It was well worth the time and prep work.
I had my camera with me.. 68 shots.. not much to shoot as we were very spread out... one gopro which failed to capture anything .. pathetic.. and the 360 cam which got it all in glorious everywhere view...
Now my friend and Pilot Eric got some great shots on his cell and he has allowed me to show you his point of view.. which was excellent. He captured the fun of the morning so very well. I enjoy every shot he took... here are the best of the best of the best, SIR!
A fantastic day with good munchies and bawdy talk to end it all.. Oh and a nice set of Herb Alpert records to create some MP3s from from Ted... yeah man.. Eric.. thanks for the shots... Fantastic.
All the equipment is back in the house, logs logged, video downloaded and pre processed... and this blog and I am done for the night. Tomorrow we have a build to install on the Weather Info System which is going to take around 4ish hours.. ugh! Then more things to do...
Facebook banner today.. I cheated a little on the number for the day... I did have to change it a minor bit...
I didn't know Starbucks was giving out Blondes... What if I have one already?
I have my minor pics held for tomorrow... Just basic stuff. Weeeee.. good weekend.
