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Ballonmania 2003: Day 1

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Nancy Thomas is a pilot for Fedex.  She flies the A300 on a regular basis but she is a qualified pilot on most large Boeing and Airbus aircraft.  Most of all, Nancy is a qualified pilot on hot air balloons.

Nancy was invited by Roland Montgolfier this year to the 220th year celebration of the launching of the first hot air balloon by the Montgolfier brothers:  Ballonmania 2003.  The celebration was held in Annonay, France, which is where the first hot air balloon was actually launched from 220 years ago.  

Nancy offered to us to crew for her during the four day celebration.  We said yes within one nanosecond of being asked!

Ballonmania 2003 gathered about 45 balloons from around Europe.

Ballooning is not what it appears to be.  This is because it is not just the very restful, peaceful drifting through airspace that one sees on photographs and films.  It is that, but much more!  And the much more is a lot more physical, but also quite a bit of fun!  Its called crewing and chasing...

We will describe it all to you as we go through the photographs.

We arrived in Annonay on Friday evening with the intention to go for our first flight.  The wind was a little too strong however, and we were all a little tired from the long drive so we decided to just relax in the very beautiful house we had been invited to stay in for the weekend as part of Nancy's crew.  The house belongs to descendants of the Montgolfier family, although they are actually more closely related to Marc Seguin one of France's most famous engineers (along with the likes of Eiffel).

You will see pictures of the house in the next page.

That evening just three balloons flew (see hpim0745).

We proceeded to a field where a propane tank had been installed in order to fill Nancy's three propane bottles.  This is the most exhausting part of ballooning.  The bottles are reasonably manageable empty.  But once filled, they contain up to 220 liters of propane, and they are very heavy.

Crewing is not all easy, but even with the hard task of filling the tanks, we all had good fun on this first step of our crew training.

The next morning we were all up at dusk, about 5 am (please stop laughing, its true, and even Christine was up and ready to go!).  We rushed to the balloon launch site which was the park of Chateau Neomas in Annonay about the size of two soccer fields.

Nancy gave us a complete rundown on assembling the balloon and preparing it for flight.  We both paid careful attention so has to be able to repeat the assembly without her assistance over the next few days.  It is customary for the crew to prepare the balloon while the pilot attends the pilot briefing (hpim0748).

That morning, 35 balloons gathered in the small park and launched within just a few minutes of each other.

The sight was awesome!  There are few things more beautiful than watching the majestic balloons slowly inflate with cold air pumped in with small fans and then slowly lift up vertically as hot air is burned in with the burners (hpim0758). 

Some balloons are already airborn and have begun the hunt for the fox!  The fox is a lead balloon that will drop a target somewhere out in the fields.  The objective is to drop a little sandbag with the number of our balloon on it, as close to the target as possible.

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hpim0738.jpg 1,1 Mo	hpim0745.jpg 701,6 Ko	hpim0746.jpg 875,6 Ko	hpim0747.jpg 938,6 Ko
hpim0748.jpg 1,1 Mo	hpim0749.jpg 1,3 Mo	hpim0750.jpg 1,0 Mo	hpim0751.jpg 956,1 Ko
hpim0752.jpg 921,0 Ko	hpim0753.jpg 905,9 Ko	hpim0754.jpg 824,3 Ko	hpim0755.jpg 1,2 Mo
hpim0756.jpg 1,2 Mo	hpim0757.jpg 1,1 Mo	hpim0758.jpg 1,0 Mo	hpim0759.jpg 706,3 Ko

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