Good Weather.....busy weekend

What a great weekend of flying......Friday evening, a gentle launch from Eastnor Castle near Ledbury in clear skies, landing in a huge cut field on an estate with a smashing gamekeeper allowing us to retrieve without any problems........Saturday evening gave us a fairly fast flight from Cheltenham, landing on a former RAF airfield, now used for gliders, Bannerdown Airfield. Conditions of permission to recover the balloon were that Nobby the pilot had to buy all the passengers a drink in the Gliding Club bar!!!!
Sunday morning was from Bath landing south of Chew Magna lakes, again with nice landowners allowing no less than 3 balloons to be recovered! The only upset for me was the verbal abuse given to me by a chap who thought that balloon crews were from Satanic lands and out to kill all livestock and rip farmers off!......Said chap was not a landowner and very lucky that I did not rise to his obvious bait for an argument....ever the diplomat!

Fair Weather....unfair winds!

The weather is good but the wind a tad strong.......launched from Kemble Airfield on Thursday morning at dawn......shot off to the SW at 20 kts and hit 30 kts at 3000 feet........managed a gentle landing at Marshfield in clear skies followed by an 'easy' retrieval from a half ploughed field.

The winds are pretty unpredictable at the moment, causing launches to be halted at short notice, a pain for passengers travelling to a site only to be sent home and a pain for the pilot and crew, who although loving the job, still need to pay the rent!! However, Safety is the key to this, and it is much better to be on the ground wishing you were up there, than being up there wishing you were on the ground(an aviation 'cliche!)

Back in Business

First flight for 10 days this morning.....Routine launch from Ashton Court in Bristol and a neat landing next to a road on Sodbury Common......weather is breaking for the better over the next few days...Wooooowhoooo.....