Morghan glowing Mojos Reverse Gravity Machine or Ytivarg. Good action shot with him blurred out a bit.
Let me start off with the ideas for T-shirts for ballooning aficionados.
Black and white styled big font front or back plates:
BALLOON CREW.
CREW! fly for free!
I am a BALLOON GROUPIE!
I came for the PHOTOGRAPHS!
Show me your BURNERS!
Will CREW for Coffee and Doughnuts!
LIFTOFFS optional LANDINGS mandatory!
BALLOONING, Where drinking before 10am is acceptable!
Many more coming.. but I have to work on the logos and layouts.. this all came from a re-imagined logo set...
So that is going off in interesting directions.....
Still have these too...
Some edits to each are quite possible on a fee basis. Have to think about retirement... or something like that.
Setting up via my Daughters Digital Stitches Store for a web site to order from. Massive amount of choices and prices are excellent.
So onto the fiesta final ( hah ) visit..... I said I would put up a few things I have not yet... Story of the dancing men on the In Czech pin and also a run down of the days of flying... so Lets start off with the dancing men portion and go from there.. end out with some select finished shots of Fiesta ( not all though ).
Closer
Very good detail for a pin. If you know the stories already skip this part and pick up where the (B) is...
Quick and easy. The families second balloon was called Patturns in the sky because she had two turning vents and so Pat turns was nice and fun and she had a square pattern of red and blue on yellow... ( our adopted colors now ) comes along the Lindstrand Racer and a full design from Lindstrand USA... modification of the red blue squares on yellow.. dual turning vents.. she is fast.. she is predictably unpredictable ( she is like a very spirited horse.. easy to control but turn away for a second and your riding a bronco ) so the name Patturns Highperactive came about.. Pat Turns High ( in the sky ) active as she is, as I was as a child.. hyperactive... and then we had the chance to buy and adopt one of the most historic and still flying balloons, Terpsnickery. She is white and soft yellow... so very elegant and very smooth in her flying... cant just go crazy with the renaming...and I wanted it to fit in the Pat turns thing as she also has two turning vents... so... I asked a friend... and right away a response came.. In Czech... I was told it was because I needed to be controlled as I was so hyperactive and I am part Cheq and she is checkered....soooooo.... there you go...BUT!!! There has to be a logo to go along with such a name as Patturns In The Shy had two golden arrows circling the balloon and Highperactive had her fast heartbeat pattern... what could be holding me in Czech..... Heh!..... Straight Jackets.... so the little guys or dancing men ( Sherlock Holmes nod ) are wearing straight jackets and then they arnt... because its a constant battle to keep me in Czech... or so I think.
Now you know the dancing men story as it happened.... Balloon Naming and conventions are somewhat like ship and boat names. Damned fun and can drive you crazy....
(B)
Some oblique shots...
Grid marker.... Some are just white.. some have red tops... L9 was our grid this year. Last year it was K9... next year we are thinking of moving North on the field to the Q row like Q8, 9 or 10. This would get us off the field quicker as the L row is usually the last to launch and for the crew its nearer the porta potties... hahaha.
Working on the hand position for a hand squeezing a burner. Going to have to get pictures "WITH" the burner in it.. and some on different burners so I can do the logo mock up.
Flights from Fiesta "Park" ( North is always up )
This was the first flight of AIBF and first flight with the Lindstrant Clear Choice basket so I played it safe and also the wind was going South... period.. so we rode it to the park on Osuna. The city created it and with some pleas left it developed for balloons to land in. Normally coming in from the east over the channel never works as there seems to be an air barrier that pushes you off.. It worked this time. Video of this flight can be seen here... http://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p715442282/e99c5b886
Classic box winds and the reason its so awesome to fly in Albuquerque.. South drainage winds and boost up 500 feet and you get a North flow. Bennie Bos and I used this to get a nice run around the field so he could get some shots then dropped down over the North channel and cruised over the trees towards the industrial park where there are grass areas ( baseball fields ) to land on. Had to keep it low to make it as the winds were shifting back and forth but we found a patch of grass to land on... Video of this flight can be seen here.... http://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p715442282/e99849fa1
Perfect BOX flight with Patricia. I dwelled at the top or Northern section ( orange colored line section ) to draw us farther East to make a landing on the open park area but the winds went to the South East instead which threw that out the window. The dark/light blue line going South was all looking for a clear place to land. Ended up landing over a school near Masthead with the assist of Clair's crew. It was nice enough to land without help but it was so much nicer to be held in place. Video not processed yet with this one.
The long run NorthWest. Augmented BOX. I took my brother up for the first time in a long time. Usually I take Nick with me when I think it might be a rough landing day. Turned out GRAND!! It was quicker than normal and I had to work hard to get into the river but with the help of a friendly sandbar we stopped on it then popped over to sail the river for a bit... that's the dark blue in the river bit then back up high to fly off to Rio Rancho. See the red box. That is a park I saw as we were passing it high up. I picked it out as our landing spot and went far North of it to catch the ( light blue ) wind direction to take us there.. it was a bit long of a ground track but excellent flying... Video coming on this also. Clip of the river part here.... http://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p715442282/e99237a17
This day we ran out of people to fly as we had some down days where the winds were too quick or going in the wrong direction to fly. When asked during the year of people.. I always say.. come out to the field and hang around and help.. you never know when I might be able to grab you out of the crowd for a flight... so... no one but Andy... my secondary test subject, victim, lucky guy.... We flew Highperactive and had a good time popping around about but ended up over I-25 and Paseo Del Norte with nary a place to land.. We tried to follow another balloon to a landing spot but the winds went away and we were flying down the frontage road South. Loads of fun that. I was able to pop us over a tall building and saw a tiny park like area between it and another building so decided to try and get in it. With the racer it was no problem but we had a tree in the way and had to work to get around it.. we did and it was a lot of fun to plant the basket and see all the wide open eyes of the people in the building looking at us. Then my son found a short cut and boomed into the park too. Crew were there to stop his basket from bounding about.. Pretty much awesome day. Video coming.
Last Saturday.. Sunday was blown out sadly... but this was different. Everyone.. EVERYONE headed South West slow and low but I saw a high East at 7300 ish feet... I proceeded to do something different and lifted up into it and went pretty much straight East. Hoping to catch that Soft South West on dropping to slightly above ground level but it had gone away. Worked like crazy to get back over the highway and was becalmed over two building areas but did in the end land in front of a building and my fantastic crew dragged ( Sherpa'ed ) ( the dark blue squiggle heading south next to the red square ) us to a nearby park to lay out in. Fun times. Video also also coming.
That was the flying. We did one static of Highperactive since we couldn't fly. Kick butt Fiesta!
Now some of the shots....
Bennies shot of the glass floor and his wild shoe laces.. Note that my feet gravitated to the runners.
Off the ground with Andy. I look out and around.. rarely directly down. Novel and love to have one of these if I flew grass all the time. Now burners.. I would love a set of the Vortech burners with all the accents in the soft yellow color.. wooooo....
Patricia looking down as we start out 500 return flight across the field. Straight down the field too...
A picture from a friend of our ground track right back to the park I picked out. Nothing more fun than having herds or gaggles or whatever you call tons of jack rabbits running ahead of you.
Okay.. now some shots from my DSLR...
Did I forget anything.. hmmmm...... Not that I can remember and I tore up my list already.. oh well.
I took this weekend off to recover but my Son didn't. He had a good flight today but there was a thermal that grabbed him close to the end of his flight. Not a fun thing. But he and his passengers are safe and sound on the ground with just a bit of fun in there.
Next weekend is the TAOS rally.. They didn't think it was going to go off but it is... I will try and fly down here on the West side to get back in the mode of flying Highperactive fast... work on catching her falling out of the sky. That's always a lot of fun.
Before that is a full week of work and interesting things as well as some seriously boring bits ( arcane paperwork ). Oh.. gotta do up some floor plans so we can work on some office changes... that WILL be fun.
Hope you have a good week that is fulfilling and that making Friday show up all the quicker for whatever fun you have planned. Reminds me I need a fish catcher.
