April 14th – Well the text is now off the balloon. Our wonderful sponsor for the last two years is going through a revamping of their business and asked us to remove them for now. We have saved all the letters and will install them on a yellow banner to put back on the balloon when the time is right. Thanks Melodie and Bob for your help.
Since we needed to do a test flight to make sure we didn’t make any errors in removing the text we took up Dave Mitchell for a commercial training flight. Dave is currently a private pilot with many hours. Dave did great considering he is more accustomed to smaller balloons. The madding was perfect and now Dave is current and ready for his check ride Thanks Brain and Bob for crewing and Erik for riding along!

THE balloon is ready to fly passengers. WE DID NOT make any errors in removing the text.

March 30, 2010…Nice flight from Heritage Park in Fishers.   Four of us flew..Keith, Mike, Jack and myself!  We basically flew right up the white river and over the waters of the gravel pits along River Road. We made our way over downtown Noblesville. During the last 10 minutes of the 1.40 minute flight the winds made a 90 degree direction turn that put us right into the parking lot of a soccer field.  We had some great passengers f or the flight, Ryan and his girl friend Madalina, the ride was a surprise for her birthday , which was actually the next day.

Check out the video of the pictures from the flight.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3geODCdAgU

Thanks to Erik & Brian for crewing!

The morning of March 18th, 2010 myself and my crew determined the weather was good for a little long jump. Based on the forecast and the winds just above 1000 feet AGL we could make a 25 mile trip without much problem.   So we met at 6am on that chilly Thursday morning and began to plot out a course that would get us the 25 mile distance.  Now I saw it was chilly, but it was about 30 degrees out, which really wasn’t bad at all.

 Based on the wind direction of 320 degrees and the winds being right at 17 to 18 knots just above 1000 feet we determined we could launch from Sheridan Airport and land at Mount Comfort  Airport.  In my almost 600 hours of balloon flying I have never flown from Airport so it would be unique. With the use of our approved lighting system we launched about 30 minutes before sunset and began our flight.  We quickly went to 2000 feet, but after the sun had risen we came back down to 1200 feet where the winds had a bit more speed.  We maintained that altitude until we got fairly close to Mount Comfort airport where we went higher, thus taking us off track from the projected landing site.  But this was planned, we had decided that fuel was on our side and we would go for our record of 34 miles and hit the next level distance of 35 miles.

After we calculated we had gone over the 35 miles we begun to search out landing spots.  By this time we had made our way into Farm country just southeast of Greenfield. The winds just above the trees were at 10 to 12 knots, but below tree level they were very calm. We brought the balloon down in a very nice cut hay field at 10:05am, where the owner welcomed us after we had landed and walked the balloon close to the road.

After the balloon was all packed up we determined we had flown 39.9 miles according to the GOPS, but going by the section we only went 36 miles, which was still over the 35.

We then made our way to a very late breakfast / early lunch.

Thanks BOB, BRIAN & ERIK for you help!

Next year we will go for a real long jump in colder weather, stronger winds and we will go a much longer distance.

On March 6th a sudden good day for flying came up, so I put out an alert on facebook and one of my old high friends took the offer and came out for a great flight.  We took off from 104th east of Olio Road and landed at Fishers High School.  Thanks Bob, Scott and Will for crewing.

Well thanks to mother nature I dont see that we will get a 4th flight in this month, but 3 flights this time of year is pretty good for Indiana considering past history. In 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006 & 2008 we didnt get any flights in during the month of February and in 2004, 2007 and 2009 we only flew one time….So 3 flight for Febraury 2010 is a record:):)

4 balloons

Mike

Brad

96th Street Bridge

2-14-10…4 balloons took to the air Sunday afternoon on Valentine’s Day to enjoy the snow covered ground. Keith, Brad, Mike and myself launched from Metro Airport in Fishers at approx 4:30pm. This was a training flight for Taylon, so I was along to instruct and enjoy the ride. We launched first with Keith right behind us.   We forgot the camera and attempted to land, but couldn’t find a good spot, so we went without the camera.  We had several spectators come out and waive at us during the flight.

The highlight of the flight was sliding the balloon across Geist Reservoir on the ice, what a blast! We flew 7.5 miles in 1 hour & 20 minutes with Bob, Alan, Bailey and Will crewing.

3 flights in 3 weeks in February what fun!

Our Flight

2.7.10… We met an hour before the sun was to rise with the outside temperature 10 degrees with about 6 inches of snow on the ground. We were short on crew, but we did just fine. I took Scott up for his first training flight that was more of an intro flight, though he did get to fly the balloon for about 40 minutes.  One other balloon flew for the first time in INDY, which was a new guy to ballooning with Jack as his instructor.

We purposely picked a launch site that would allow us to fly over Morse Lake, which we did and had a great gentle landing on the hard surface of the frozen lake.  The folks that were watching us for the warmth of their homes must of thought we were nuts!

We traveled 6.6 miles in 1 hour & 45 minutes, but the last 30 minutes of the flight were very slow with the winds changing directions many times. 

We had a great landing in the Westfield High School parking lot.   Thanks Bob for crewing alone, no Beth she wouldn’t come out.

New balloon to Indy

2-1-10…Long flght for Bob.  We flew for 2 hours, okay we flew for 1 hour and 50 minutes, but the balloon was fully inflated and ready for takeoff for 10 minutes due to a restroom break by Will.  We launched with Mark flying his balloon also from the barn in Fortville. The wind was very slow, which gave Bob the chance to do several practice landings, we did 4 in total. We were attempting to make it to Mike’s (a fellow balloon pilot) house to throw a baggie, but decided to stay low and fly to the west due to the upcoming darkness. 

As we headed west we noticed a truck traveling very fast through the fields below chasing us. We assumed it was a farmer that thought we were going to land, but it ended up being teenagers that just wanted to say hello!

We made out final landing on the northwest corner of 104^th and 400 w and travled 5 miles.   Beth and Will were our wonderful crew for the flight.

Afterwards Mark has all back to his place for chili.

The yellow pins show our takeoff and landing spots

Well we are well into 2010, but I wanted to give everyone a recap of 2009 before it gets away from us!

I logged a total of 108 hours that included 89 flights. Take away the tethers and glows would make our average flight approx 1 hour & 15 minutes.

Of those 89 flights 22 were training flights, 6 were tethers, 8 were glows and 53 were passenger / event flights.

8 flights were in other states, 6 flights were in Mexico and the remaining 75 flights were here in INDIANA.

Of those flights, 21 hours were flown on Inflated Ego, 86 in Blown Away and the other hour with Keith Shaffer.

Pilots that received training hours in 2009 included Bob, Brad, Taylon and Keith.

I am amazed I was able to get this many hours in considering I left the country for 9 different trips.

Let’s see what 2010 brings, we have 4 flights already with a total 5 hours and 40 minutes.

Thanks to all the crew for their help in 2009!

Thanks for reading, TONY SANDLIN