Blog 1 - July 2007

I have had a keen interest in Hot Air Ballooning Since a very early age, I have attended every Balloon Festival in Northmapton apart from the Festival in 2003 as I was on holiday.

My first real Ballooning experience was in 2000 when I went along and helped out the local balloon company when my aunt flew.

I completed my first balloon flight in 2002 when I flew with the Benadryl Balloon Team at the Northampton Balloon Festival, flight lasted for 45 minutes traveling from Northampton, Racecourse to Overstone Park. This experience was made all that extra special as it was a surprise flight, I was under the impression it was my parents flying however it was me and my mum that flew.

After 2002 Ballooning went quiet for me, until 2004 when me and my mate Matt went along to the Balloon Festival and asked if any of the Balloon Pilots needed any extra crew? To our surprise extra crew was in fact needed on the Scottish Piper Balloon and the Jaguar Car Balloon, we turned up on the Saturday night and met the pilots, Muir Moffat (Piper) and Ian Martin (Jaguar), we were in the arena and were allocated to the Jaguar Car Balloon, pilots had got the go ahead that they could fly and about 60 balloons took to the Sky's, due to the space and time needed to inflate these two balloons, neither flew on the Saturday night, but it gave us an indication of how much work is needed to pack up a special shape balloon.

At the crack of dawn on the Sunday Morning I looked out the window, no winds but a little bit of cloud, we went along to the Launch site and we got the go ahead that balloons were going to Launch, we inflated our balloon which took all of nearly an hour to get into the air the balloon flew for nearly an hour flying out to Cottesbrooke Hall.

From 2004 I was going along to local balloon launches to see what was going on and just generally keeping up a keen interest in Ballooning.

In August 2006 I saw an advert on a website for local pilot James Adkins needing extra crew and I jumped at the opportunity, I have since been crewing for James until this day and am currently learning to fly in G-BPEZ and have 7 Hours done on my training.


Blog 2 - Aug 07 - May 2008

August 2007

August 2007 saw the annual Balloon Festival roll into town at the Racecourse, Northampton. Crewing for Rowland Benbrooke and Jaime Cameron-Stewart.

Friday of the Festival saw the only flyable day with a flight in the morning and evening, with the rest of the weekends weather a complete write off for flying.

Once we had refuled and eaten breakfast from the Friday morning flight, we made our way out and saw some balloons inflating in the main arena, bearing in mind the surface wind was easily exceeding 10mph, G-CEDF (EDF Energy Balloon) was inflating with only 2 crew, including the pilot, we decided to lend a hand, so our mid morning was spent helping Bailey Balloons' Nick Duppa-Miller. Any balloonist will tell you that tethering a 105 (105,000 cubic feet) balloon in a 10mph + surface wind with only 2 crew isn't easy, so they were very glad of the help.

After the flight on the Friday evening, we refuled and hoped for improvement on the forecast, unfortunately that improvement never came with wind, rain and low cloud dominating the weather for the rest of the weekend.

October 2007

With most atendees of the Anually held One Man Meet jetting off to the sun of Italy, an alternate One Man Meet was organised to be held at Husbands Bosworth Airfield/Kelmarsh Hall. I attended Day 2 of the meet on 14th October with James as spectators to have a look at some of the "cloud hoppers" that were in attendance.

Coming soon... (November 07 - Trip to the Cameron Balloon Factory and sitting my ground exams)