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.
