This weekend we saw the return if Kiss A Hoy. Our oldest balloon is back home. After many runs around the country and lots and lots of paperwork... What was once an Aerostar balloon is now an Experimental balloon.
For reasons.
Too many to go into here and far too long a conversation to put down here I will only say that she can now fly.
This Aerostar started out as an Aerostar Raven 77. That's 77,000 cubic feet of air. Paravent...which means she has half a crown vent and half is held in by what are called butterfly clips. Maybe I will get a close-up picture of that sometime. Here are a few from my phone camera.
Dawn breaks in the desert. An early flyer is up and heading Sourthish.
A lot of people showed up to try and fly. They ground winds were... odd.
Half headed north and our half stayed put. Figured it would be fine here...and it was.
Conversations while waiting for the drainage winds to calm down a bit and see who would be first to brave the micro gusts.
Dropped a little then headed back up. Not a great show of what the winds were doing.. and in the end they did odd things even at altitude.
Bob installing a velcro section I think. This balloon used to belong to Bob. it was his first bought balloon.
Checking out to see if everything else is good to go up there.
Mo, Rory, and Bob standing there not believing it was that easy to put it all in.
She is a dark horse of our four balloons. She also seems to be the most colorful of our four. The inside ... well, I will show you in the pictures from the Sony DSLR in a bit.
As they headed up they had South and Southeast and then way up where Kiss A Hoy is now there was a nice Northwest. Mo and Bob rode this out west to get a feel for the balloon and make sure she was working correctly. Shawn was flying Bobs new balloon PITAS KISS, just below. As normal with Bob.. if everyone is going West PITAS KISS goes East.
Bob and Mo enjoying a mid-flight selfie while cutting Northwest. Mo's first flight was in this exact balloon with Bob when he was 18 months old. Long time and now he can reach the burners.
Here are a few shots from the Sony RX10V4.
Stained glass above. She is so very beautiful inside.
Eric having some fun with his balloon on the edge of the field. He is a very experienced Pilot and this seems worrisome but was in fact done by design ( the floppiness of the envelope on hot inflation )
First heat and she responded nicely.
Dual Thunder and Clot burners are overpowered for a 77,000 but its always better to have more than less.
Kiss A Hoy now has a scoop at her throat instead of a skirt she did have in the past. better to direct air up into the envelope this way. needs some adjusting but off they go easily.
Robert hanging onto his wife Katrina's crown line. Keeping everything nice and tight.
Katrina handles a wild inflation easily. Shawn behind her getting PITAS KISS up and way back there Keith is working to get in the air too. I'm the only one not in the air...again!
Eric on the other edge of the arroyo... So clean is the Sonys view that it picked out a Southwest airplane landing at the Sunport behind him. Nice!
Mo brought Kiss A Hoy down in an arroyo nicely on a "road".
Shane gets the duty of pulling down the envelope. In a paravent it's always a chore to get it to expel all the hot air.
A conversation between Bob and Mo through the envelope. Great capture.
Just an interesting shot I always find cool.
Whatever happened to the straps for her. We think they are somewhere between Arizona and Florida.
It was a good day and she is all set except for some adjustments to the new scoop.
Now the new week is about to start. I have some repairs to do if I want to fly next weekend at the AAAA meet. Times a wasting.
I had my video card die in my Dell Aurora computer. Ever try and find a Nvidia 1070 card lately.. forgetit. I called Dell and even though the computer is out of warranty they shipped my a reconditioned card. Working great so far! Nice... The price was very nice too. I like Dell!
Now I am testing building another tower in Fallout 4. So far so good.
How high can I go.. Really it's terribly boring to just keep placing wall segments.
Let's go next week!!!
