When things just go wrong... three strikes in ballooning

It was a down weekend for me but my son had a flight of two to fly on Saturday. We got out there in time and were the first to start inflating with an interesting low level East wind with an upper North to Northwest. Everyone was slow and he stood up first...only to pull the top as the balloon was dishing in and making it unstable. Unfortunately when pulling it down the fabric got caught in the pulley and it tore... Ending flying for us for the day.

But some decided to fly anyway. The cold inflation's on each were interesting and the hot inflation was novel at best. All were on the edge of control but all of the pilots pulled it off nicely.

I would not have flown due to the brisk inflation and the direction. But that's me. I like to fly low, chase rabbits and have a merry ole time dancing closer to the ground. I usually only go up high to get to a place I want to be to come back down and play again. So for me it would have been a meh flight.

So this week as quickly as possible the envelope has to go in and get repaired. Shouldn't be a problem with our outstanding repair facility, AERCO. Fingers crossed.

The few shots I took with either the Nikon D7100 or the Sony RX10V4 are below. Few as there were few that flew...

Rod seems to have his passengers sign the bottom of his basket. Pretty cool idea...

Putting some heat to it and it was  rocking back and forth but with a lot of weight on the sides she calmed down enough to load passengers and get up in the air.

He went right up there and cut North and fiddled around. I didn't see his landing but I'm sure it was fun for him.

Some balloons went North and tracked back South a bit. This was a long 600mm shot with some fast clouds behind and some virga showing up in between.

Rainbow Ryders took off to our South, grabbed an early West then walked North and landed where we were launching from.

Here are a few from my cell phone.

Packing up after the tear....booo...

Rainbow Ryders plops down with a massive amount of passengers... should have crashed their after flight party but our tail gate was very nice.

Overflight and poor quality shot of a formation flight with a straggler not in this picture.

Normally I do not take pictures of food but the fried mozz at Joes Italian restaurant was excellent...  It was a spur of the moment run into Rio Rancho to have a wonderful dinner.

I decided I needed a better keyboard with real keys and the side number pad so I went for this alienware that matches my aurora computer. Nice yellow breathing lights. Its a bear to write this blog on at this moment as the keys are farther apart and have more depth than my little logitech. They make a loud clicky sound as well. Going to take some getting used to. Its bigger and heavier too.

Lastly I mocked up my own dang Fiesta card! LOL. Why... because I can and it was fun to try.

I could have made it spot on but that was not the reason to do it... I wanted to have some fun and I did. I wonder how close I got the the real one......when they ever post it...  Its a tease!

Danged delete key is in a different place.. my fingers are flipping out.

Going to be a busy week. Air handlers going in and old cranky units going out. Its time for something more reliable and less expensive to run.

To close out this blog... most Pilots have a process on deciding to fly or not. Besides the weather. The three strikes rule is pretty good. Forgetting an item, something gets broken, something missing or connected wrong...anything that causes the process of the balloon standing up and flying to stop.. three strikes and your out.... If the weather is odd is a very good reason to sit it out.

This Saturday the winds were quick before sunrise and still quick after with little calmer bits in there... which we call sucker holes. There was large and speedy clouds to the West and more clouds with slices and virga to the North. All of those things could mean outflow winds or not... its a decision to make.

I like to err on the ground and not in the air... Much easier to get to the truck and sit on the tail gate when you are already on the ground.

Do you have a checklist for Go NoGo on your flights? Do you have one for daily life... If I could just get to that third in the morning I could stay home more...hahahaha....

Have a fun filled week and see you out next weekend!

Aviation Weather for Ballooning & other nifty stuff

I got to fly... I got to fly! I got to fly... and it was fun!

But first!

Aviation weather....

Here is how easy it is to locate the exact ( hopefully ) weather report for the specific launch sites in the Albuquerque area!  With pictures!!! Yaaaaa!!!

Search for NWS Albuquerque...

You will get to this page.

Scroll down....

Down at the bottom, look for the Aviation Forecast green icon with the plane on it.

Click on it!

That gets you this page...  Look down towards the bottom and find Balloon Forecasts..

Click on it!

This page pops up.... WOW.. so cool!   Select the launch site you feel the need to fly from.

CLICK ON IT!!!

BOOM!  You get the tabular forecast for that specific area! Way cool!

Enter the date and time in the 48 Hour Forecast Period and you should see your forecast.

Within a 48 hour window you can get the weather for the area. Its been pretty good at being close to right the last weekend.... But you know unless you go out to the launch area you can never know for sure how the winds will be.  Hope this helps you decide on flying or not.

Brought to you by the NWS in Albuquerque.

Nice huh! Blast Valve and some other weather sites give you a generic forecast based around the airport... which is pretty bad for specifics.

So that was fun.. I had meant to do that last week but got sidetracked.

Onward!!!

My flight this weekend....

Let me preface this by saying that my Lindstrand Racer, Patturns Highperactive is a heavy bugger for being a 69,000 balloon. Or it feels that way. With the baffle in the middle she is FUN to squeeze after landing... So I usually like to have five strong people to help pack it away. 

When I got out to the field this Saturday it was covered with balloons and people but I had myself, Mary, Mo, Rory and Hannah... that's it. I resigned myself to sitting on the ground because just us packing it up would be a lot of hard work.

After watching everyone else go floating off into the air we decided the least we could do it pull her out of the dry bag where she was sitting after I sewed the temp sensor in place and get her into the regular bag...

This meant we had to drop the basket off the trailer first... The basket with burners, tanks, fuel and accessories weighs in around...449 lbs. I can get it off and rotate it around on a corner and get her positioned. That's all just maneuvering. The Envelope weighs 232 lbs and cannot be lifted by me alone. Its a bit unwieldy for two people but can be done.

Dropped the basket out and then drove the trailer out so that the envelope could be pulled out of the back of the trailer to meet up with where the basket was.... Off a bit but it worked.. then we were pretty much saying.. its out.. and its still nice.. lets get it stood up and check the temps... which we did but then it was like.. well its up so ... heck lets go fly.. and we did that too.

The FAA were out visiting, which is fine. Ramp checks are not unusual and this close to Fiesta its something to do. I said my hello's and go on with my stuff... and we took off....

Easily breaking contact with the earth again and as usual... rotating counter clockwise to hide our tracks we zipped up to 700 feet above the ground and headed Southwest. A slight curve.... Entered Double Eagle airport airspace so gave them a call on the radio... second time he caught my call and reported back that he was busy and gave me the altimeter and clicked off.. no problem there...

We bobbled along at 700 to 750 feet up looking for a place to land until the wind stopped. I mean stopped. We were over an arroyo. Going up 200 feet and down 300 feet got us nothing. We were becalmed. So... since the arroyo was below I dropped out and stopped the balloon about 10 feet up from the edge of the arroyo and we had a slight drift to the North. Nice because there was a bridge there and if I could get us close to a road we could drag her to a clear space and lay her down.

As we came towards the bridge railing I noticed that only half of the bridge was being use for traffic so I popped over the rail and sat down on a nice dry bit of clear bridge. Sweet. Crew were there about four minutes after and we dragged the basket back to the East a bit and laid her down sweetly.

Cant beat that at all. Packed up and back to the field for a bit of a tailgate and visit... a good flying day.

Here are some pictures for the Nikon 7100 with 10.5 fisheye lens, my cell phone and also some clips from the Kodak 360 video cam.

Cell phone... 

Kodak 360 vid cam...

The bridge sit.

Laying down on the job.

Holding the crown open.

Making sure we dont roll the envelope over to the roadway. It was completely safe.

Packing up was a job but we snaked it over itself and that made it easy to do.  ( cell phone )

Yay Bridge!

I wished we had a pic of us standing up on the bridge but I forgot to try and get that done. Oh well.

This upcoming week.... Contact Aerco on my fuel tanks.... Calling ya all tomorrow... fair warning LOL.

Try and get more old equipment to disposal... prepare for incoming equipment.

Prepare for new Air Handlers to arrive and be installed... woo boy...

I forget!

Have a fun week your own self...

Oh.. there is a new Tim Powers book out.. Must go get that.... It has a very weird premise....

Ballooning, Old stuff, and Yards....

A busy week this week. A quiet weekend... or a non ballooning weekend... sigh. I sat on the ground so others could fly... If I say I'm flying it will be horrible out or just over the line of no go... If I say I'm not not flying I can usually sneak in a flight.... If I don't go out to the field invariably its a beautiful day to fly.

Lets just say I do not like maintaining a yard, pond, plot of land... whatever.. I got over dirty hands and sticky fingers when I was around 9 years old. Now I don't even like the smell of a hamburger on my fingers any longer than necessary.

Not caring to do yard work at all leads me to having a double lot on which my house sits. Why? Because it had a huge side yard to drive balloon trailers and vehicles into easily. Over 22ft on one side and 14ft on the other. Huge. Sadly hugely full of weeds most times. Then the back may be shallow but not that shallow and also weedy.. with the in ground pond in there and a 22 by 24 foot zen garden it still takes a long time to deal with when I don't want to deal with it at all.

Don't get me wrong. I love the distance I have from my back and side neighbors... its very nice and they cant even see into my backyard now that the silly person behind me's tall wood eyesore fort he built so his kids could look right into my yard has fallen down... its back to being nice and private back there.... if not for the weeds, tree sprouts from my neighbors stupid tree and the damn mint the last owner of my house decided to let run free. That is three very ignorant people... and I have to deal with the fallout of that all.

Plans are in the works to have the East side yard and North back yard graded flat with a nice slope towards the back away from the house then covered in breathable matting and some nice Santa Fe rose rock spread everywhere. Then my above ground pond I made out of an 8 ft watering trough will be re positioned where the in ground pond was and then some of the huge boulders that surround the existing in ground pond will be reused to set along the outside and then plants and seating areas will be set in place. Easy to maintain...NO WEEDS! Nice water feature without the back pain and crap!.

Here is what it looks like now....

All those tree sprouts are from my neighbors tree. He should be responsible for cleaning it up. Massive amount of cutting and slicing. Cant pull these things. I cut them down to their base but the stumpy things are still there. Once we level the area they will be pulled up.

After the cutting and hacking and swearing and pain and chopping and digging and slipping its nice again. Had to unclog the waterfall spout as the mint climbs up it and clogs the output even though I put an extension on to stop that. Removed the rock that used to hide it nicely as it would be used as a launch spot for the mint. Also had to pull the 100 pound filter box out without falling in and replace the filter and wash off the filtering balls. Its running fine now and will be crystal clear by tomorrow.

The water trough pond. 8 foot by 2 1/2 deep. Replanted Lilly's are doing well but no flowers yet. Two water spouts to oxygenate the water have adjustable valves so I can lessen the flow or make it splash everywhere...

Good cover for the transplanted fish... they are hiding...

My single barrel cactus has decided it was lonely... has to be taken out and put in a pot before the yard gets flattened.

WEED! Neat colors though.

Cool reflections from the water fall feature. The cost of buying a molded water fall feature was completely ridiculous so I used PVC piping and cut slash ports and it works as nicely. When covered with rocks after its moved into place, will look very nice.

My fish are hiding...

Not well as they are stacked up together.

A good patina is emerging on the bottom of the pond. I might think to put some black plastic down to cut the reflectivity.

Favorite picture so far today.

Besides that there was a fun party I went to... Baked potato's and desserts.. great conversations but left early as I had planned on flying the next morning....

Chili poppers....

Very funny people...

More funny people!

Before all of that I was digging through stuff from my Dads that had to be cleared out and ran across this wonderfully preserved movie camera that was my Mothers Fathers.... What a find...

A camera and projector!

I was thinking to look it up and see what year it was made. It was my Grandfathers so it has much personal meaning to me and fits my collection of old cameras nicely.

Basic lighting settings...

Winder on the side...

I believe this is the fpm setting.

So very good condition... but very very heavy.

Bulb and film cartridges.

Completely intact. I need to find someone who can tell me if there is anything on the film... There was FILM IN IT!

Basic hoop viewfinder... Even the leather strap is in good condition. What a find!

 Found this link: http://www.pathefilm.uk/95gear/95gearcampro.htm

So all around it was a good week if not a week I flew. It would have been an excellent week if that had happened.

Looking forward to this next weekend to Not Not fly... shhhhh...... Need to get Highperactive out and check her temp sensor seating as I just sewed her in to keep it from flopping out into the hot hot away from the fabric of the envelope.

Where its supposed to sit.. but it slides too easily out or in.. so a loose knot in the cable about two inches back....

With a bit of high temperature thread looped into the knot to stop it from moving. Its perfectly secure and only moves about a quarter inch if at all. I need to make sure its not binding or tugging. It shouldn't be as there is a lot of cable on this sensor. But its best to check. We tried to used that velcro but it didn't work either.

I was going to do a whole blog on Hot air balloon instruments and sensors but not being able to get pictures of everything in time stopped that.. so maybe in the future.

If you want a good read.. go find these books.. they are basic sci fi and I have read them over and over...

Great author. Fun and fresh storyline....  All of these are quick reads.

Another great Author and a wild story-line. Plus learn some Navajo and a bit on sand paintings.

This silly story beats the heck out of Star Wars, or pretty much any space battle type movie... Hilarious and fun. There ends up being five books to this story-line. Its a novel novel by Lee McKeone.

Guess what.. you cant find any of these in digital form.

Oh I have more stuff but it has to wait till next weekend!

Have a fun remainder of your Sunday and a quick week.