But I digress.. regress... fall on the floor and whine!
The above photograph... a Lindstrand envelope crown ring. Beautiful!!!!
When they make a balloon the really make it. I love the burnished bronzeish color. I pretty much made poor Anthony stand there and hold it just so so I could get this shot.
The crown ring sits right at the top of a hot air balloon envelope and those straps, or what we call load tapes are to hold the envelope together. There are verticles ( which are sewed to this ring ) and horizontals. The stitching has to be just so and it is FAA certified.
Now that went first but let me back up and lead you forward in the right order.
Saturday my Son Mo received his Commercial rating for Hot Air Balloons with an onboard heater. No easy feat! So you are aware, for those who don't know, A hot air balloon is a real aircraft. It has to follow all the regulations and rules a fixed-wing aircraft does under it type HABwah. So when you want to become a Private or Commercial Pilot you have to do all the classwork, the flight hours, the training flights, the solos, the testing, the orals, then after all that you have to do a flight with an examiner. It's not easy to get either rating but if you study you can do it. He did it.
All I had to do was fret and worry... and give him my shoes off my feet in the end.
Here are a few shots I have. I was kinda working so didn't have the camera out until he took off.
Lofting up into traffic. We made sure his airspace was clear to take off. It was a beautiful day.
Up and over and North.
Out past a road called Northern.. because...well you get it... and into ground track mode and he at this time had to teach his examiner how to land on the whisper burner... ask me what that is later.
Landed on a road. Some conversation while everything stopped jiggling about.
The examiner, Beth will put you at ease nicely. She is an impressive person. Mo is smiling a lot and he still didn't know if he passed or not.
Down comes the envelope and it wanted to go Northish and we wanted it Eastish.. it went Northeastish. A big sail. Just let it lay down and then pack it up. No problem.
Sometime after this Beth let us know he passed..which was wonderful. Now he will be training new people who want to become private or commercial pilots.. and I hope to be one of them. I have a lot of bad habits though.
I had to give Mo my shoes as his were soaking wet from his initiation dousing and he had to go get refueled for Sundays Top Gun competition. I just walked around the desert in my socks for an hour. No problem..ok.. the little rocks were sharp.
Sunday was another very early morning. Competition... Top Gun competition is quite different than regular flying for fun. Rules.. lots and lots of rules...
The process for this morning was a watership down.. and yes.. it had to be explained to me too. Starting target had a hare balloon at it. The hare balloons launches and flys for 15 to 20 minutes then lands and lays out a target... then flys off again and lays out another target after another 15 or 20 minutes in the air. The competitors have to launch after the hare takes off.. get to that initial launch target then onto the others and I think there was another somewhere in there with trackers... I'm forgetting now.
Sadly it never happened. The hare balloon, which had just been purchased was getting knocked about a lot on hot inflation and the direction and speed caused everything to be canceled. The pilot did a good job on inflating it and not burning it but it was just too crazy.
Here are a few shots of that...
Basket laid just off the sidewalk. Chase vehicle in the parking lot. Cold inflating going on. The tracks in the grass were made by some ass the night before.
A slight dish on the right side was an indicator of a gusty wind to come.
Putting the heat to it. A good tie off set to the back of the truck and crew ready to put weight on the basket to hold her from slipping into the air too soon.
Rocking as she comes up. Not a lot of fun but done well.
Passengers in but being rolled back and forth and that about called it there.
One of the owners takes the position of rest and also stopping any more air getting in the envelope as she exhausts the hot air out the top.
And her other owner is doing the knee squeeze down the envelope. Makes for some green knee stains and a lot of talking... LOL... No. it's one way to get the air out fast. It's okay on grass but I don't do it because we normally land on rock or gravel and that would be bad.,
A new to them balloon with no name picked out yet. From what I heard of names it should go along with her colors nicely.
Congratulations guys!
After that, it was back home and try to do more cleaning inside as the outside temp was floating around 100 degrees. Making that harder was being so tired.
Something got done. If it would just cool down a bit I could get more done..but so far no luck there.
So a good weekend for the most part but a very tiring one all over.
Still working on a switch of the blog site to my own website and clean it up a bit in the subject matter.
Time to post this...
Have a great week and Friday will be here before you know it. For those of you that don't go to a fixed job... Harder for you and I don't envy you much.
