October is proving to be a good month for ballooning as we wind down to one flight per day due to lack of daylight!
The previous two weeks have seen flights on most days, sometimes having just an hour between finishing the morning flight and starting the evening flight preparations!!
This has been a record season for the pilot in terms of launches, over 120 thus far!, and personally, I have been involved in 80 so far this year, 22 up on last year and still 3 full weeks to go!
The weather has gone ' tits up ' for this week, but Friday looks good!.....so fingers crossed for a few more before winter takes over!
Monday 19 October 2009
Sunday 4 October 2009
Keep Out!
Sunday morning brought us lots of sunshine for a Bath launch. The normal crew of two swelled to four as Chris came out to see if he could hack being a 'balloon chaser'. We were also joined by Pete, friend of the pilot, who is a qualified pilot working towards getting his commercial license, he also gave a hand.
Launch was 'normal' with a flight East/slightly South East. Pilot had trouble finding suitable field and ended up on the edge of firing range at Salisbury Plain! The range warden happened to be a 'jobsworth' who told the pilot that he would have to report the 5/10 metre infringement into the firing range which was not in use!!....but it seemed to be ok to go flying into the 'death zone' if you owned a quad bike and your name was Colin!!
Sunday afternoon was a Glastonbury take off in high cloud across the Somerset levels in light winds,landing near a river and having to cross four fields owned by four different owners!!!...lovely basket of passengers who thought I was very fit for a 50 something!!! :-D
Launch was 'normal' with a flight East/slightly South East. Pilot had trouble finding suitable field and ended up on the edge of firing range at Salisbury Plain! The range warden happened to be a 'jobsworth' who told the pilot that he would have to report the 5/10 metre infringement into the firing range which was not in use!!....but it seemed to be ok to go flying into the 'death zone' if you owned a quad bike and your name was Colin!!
Sunday afternoon was a Glastonbury take off in high cloud across the Somerset levels in light winds,landing near a river and having to cross four fields owned by four different owners!!!...lovely basket of passengers who thought I was very fit for a 50 something!!! :-D
Saturday 3 October 2009
Busy Busy Busy
Woooooooowhooooo .... what a mad couple of weeks......loads and loads of flying...from York..4 flights of 8 Virgin balloons taking off together from York racecourse on 18/19/20 September....then back for various local flights from Bristol, Monmouth, Cheltenham, Glastonbury, Bath over the past 10 days until the weather finally broke yesterday.....but Sunday is looking good and if we launch we will be putting a new recruit through his paces to join the ground crew.
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