For over 20 years on the second Monday in August, or the Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday depending on the weather, hot air balloons have gathered on Streatley Recreation Ground and put on a tethered display. Initially this was started purely as a thank you to the local residents for allowing balloons to fly from the …
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Every August balloonists from all over the Thames Valley descend on Streatley Recreation Ground to inflate their balloons at dusk when they glow like giant lightbulbs for the enjoyment of the local villagers. The nightglow was orginally started as a way for the local balloonist to say thank you to the village for allowing us …
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It’s been about 6 weeks since Beat told me they were changing their logo, that the balloon I’d been so proud, so excited, to finally be able to fly, that was the basis for a project that would give me the life I craved, is nothing now but an embarrassing failure. That all those who …
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Note: This video has no sound I love strapping GoPro action cameras to my balloons when I fly. I love the post-flight challenge of creating timelapse videos that encapsulate the spirit and emotion of the flights I’ve flown, as well as, allowing all those involved to relive the memories and experiences. One problem though is …
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I should have been in France, flying with the team from Lindstrand Technologies at the Lorraine Mondial Air Ballon event. Or Metz as it’s known to the British ballooning community. Sadly though, a misbehaving fuel cylinder and my own mental health meant that my time in France was cut down to a measly 36 hours. …
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In April 2000 my family started a small little company allowing people to purchase a “proper” balloon flight as we liked to call it. The idea, was that instead of flying in a balloon with lots of passengers, we wanted to make it exclusive, where people would feel they were going on their own flight, rather than being part of a larger group …
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Tutti Frutti is a Lindstrand 56B made in Spring 1999 as a stock balloon to use up left over fabric from other jobs. To date, I believe it is the only 56,000 cubic foot “B-Type” envelope they have ever made, with larger volumes seeming more popular with customers; and with the B Type being essentially phased out of the Lindstrand production line-up it may well never get a sibling to share the sky with …
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Having essentially grown up into ballooning as a result of my family’s, and especially my father’s involvement, I was very lucky to be a surrounded by commercial ballooning at the start of the “boom”. I was a small child, suddenly engulfed by these new, amazing, special shapes, these incomprehensible flying machines…
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I think it’s fair to say that for a long, long time this day looked like it may never happen. The previous summer I had purchased a small, 17,000 cubic foot cloudhopper from Belgium – OO-BRV – which at the time, in a non-flyable state, not because of there was anything technically wrong with the …
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Having been working my way through the list of “promised flights” has meant that it’s been over a year since I last flew with Woody and considering that we used to do so much flying together in Lambert Smith Hampton 3 (G-CDYL) that is an amazing fact! Also, with the wind so predominantly coming from …
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