May 15, 2010

Nice sunrise flight with both of our balloons in the air on Saturday morning. We took off from Beer Slide west of Morse Lake and landed west of 32 off of 31.  We went to 5200 feet (1 mile) during the flight.  Thank you to the Sinclair’s for flying with us.  We were in the air for 1:40.

Crew included Hazel, Brian & Hazel.   Bob and Brad flew Inflated Ego.

May 9, 2010, Sunrise

Well the weather finally allowed us to get of the ground at the INDY 500 Centennial Balloon event. We were weather out both Friday and Saturday and for both glows.  But on Sunday 33 balloons took to the sky from the track and headed south and a bit to the east. The target was near SR37 and Harding Street just south of 465. We managed to throw our baggie and placed 16^th…131 feet from the target.  We then went on to fly for another 30 minutes landing at Perry Meridian High School.  1:05 air time.

Thanks for crewing..Bob, Scott, Brain, Alan & Beth.

April 28th.
Sunset flight Over Geist with Shirley & Terry. We launched from the school on 82nd Street just west of Sergeant Rd. Our goal was to fly over the passenger’s house on Geist. Though we didn’t go right over we did get to see their house from the balloon.
We landed in a small neighborhood just east of Carroll Rd south of 96th Street. We were able to give tether rides to the folks of the neighborhood before packing the balloon away. 1:10 air time.

Thanks Bob and Brian for crewing!

April 20, 2010

We took up one of the crew guys (Alan) and his friend Rose. Rose actually thought she was coming out to crew, but while the balloon was inflating I told her Alan was taking her up for her birthday. Her birthday isn’t until next week, but I didn’t want to pass a perfect day to fly.

We launched from Noblesville Elementary in very calm winds. We headed south along SR 37 at which time we dropped toy parachutes from 3800 feet. Both Alan and Rose watched the parachutes until they hit the ground about 30 minutes later.
The winds were so calm we began hovering over a neighborhood bringing out many folks to watch. We started to make an approach on a cul-de-sac and the winds shifted back and we went over a house and landed right in front of it in the street. Perfect landing with at least 50 there to watch and enjoy.

On the way back we picked up one of the toy parachutes, first time for that

Thanks to Bob, Scott and Will for crewing…And Alan and Rose you got to fly and crew.

April 18th, 2010
After a month of planning with our passenger Steven we finally got to the special day. We were schedule for the evening before, but the winds just didn’t work out. We meet Steven and his then girlfriend Gina at Hamilton Town Center at 6:15am. She was very surprised about the balloon ride. We made our way to Lapel High School to launch the balloon.

Today was going to be a very special day. The plan was to practice dropping baggies on an X to get ready for this year’s upcoming rallies. Well that is the story we told Gina. We had a perfect launch and went to 2000 feet. We began conversing with the crew (BOB & BRIAN) to let them know where they should place the X. We aborted the first location and went for selection #2 in a neighborhood. The crew spread out the rectangle shaped X that measures 4’ x 30’. How can an X be rectangle? Well it was actually a banner that read “WILL YOU MARRY ME?” When Gina first saw the banner she read it as “WILL YOU MAKE ME”, but she quickly realized what it said and turned to Steven. Of course I got out of their way the best I could giving them some private time after that.

After some tears a YES and a few pictures we continued our 1:25 minute flight landing at MT Comfort Airport for a great landing.

Check out the little video we created.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gK06zLoWkg

Congradulations to the newly engaged couple!

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:):)