Up, up and away at Callaway

PINE MOUNTAIN, Ga. — Up, up and away is the way at Callaway’s annual hot air balloon festival.

Della Stabler, a freshman at Southern Union, describes her hot air balloon ride as being like watching a video as the landscape expands below you.

“You just gently rise up,” she said. “You just drift up, and you watch the land spread out below you.
It is beautiful.”

She described the view and in the air surrounded by all other colorful balloons as “majestic.”

Stabler and her friend Will Barnard, both of Auburn, have helped balloonists for the last five years at Callaway Garden’s annual Sky High Hot Air Balloon Festival over the Labor Day Weekend. They have helped the balloon pilots by doing whatever is needed at the time.

Barnard said he has had a chance to fly two or three times and worked on the chase crew two or three times.

The chase crew follows the hot air balloon’s flight, helps get it down packed and back to Callaway for the next flight.

“When we fly, its like looking down on a small terrain map,” the high school senior said. “People look like little ants.

“It’s very calm and peaceful.”

The festival includes a balloon “glow” Friday night, tethered rides and launches in the early morning and late
afternoon.

On Friday, the pilots inflated a number of the balloons right a dark next to the beach at the Garden’s Robin Lake. After being unpacked, spread out and attached to the wicker basket, the envelope is filled with air by a large fan and then the air is heated with a propane flame causing it to stand upright.

“What we do is light these balloons up just like a big candle,” said Chuck Norton, who served as the festival’s “Balloon Meister.”

“The lighter the colors, the brighter the colors, the better they look,” he said. “The darker colors are harder to see.

“The crowd enjoys it, and we enjoy it because we get to spend time with all the spectators. They come up and ask questions, and we can tell them about the sport of ballooning.”

Norton said you can get into ballooning different ways.

“The best way, probably, is to start crewing, so you can see if you would really like to do it.

“It’s kinda like bass fishing, you can start off kinda small. Probably put in an investment of about $10,000 buying used equipment. Learning how to fly will take you a little bit of time, and at that point figure out what you want to do.

“If you want to start doing pay rides and doing commercial work, you will, of course, want to buy a new piece of equipment to utilize doing that. If you are just going to be doing it as a general sport, you can stay with used equipment, go to events and have a good time.

Norton said, “The big thing is the fellowship you have with all the balloonists and spectators around. We go to different events all over the country, have a good time and meet a lot of families.”

He said a good time doesn’t involve alcohol.

“We can’t drink for eight hours before we do a flight.”

Norton said he has been doing this about 20 years.

“It is like doing anything else. You start doing it, get caught up in it, keep making those investments to keep doing it and having a good time.

“We (he and his wife, Deborah) saw some balloons one day. Kinda got interested in it and started going to some ballooning events. Then started crewing. From there, got my lessons, got my license, and went from there.

“This is just like regular aviation. We go through the same basic training with weather and instruments and stuff. Then we branch off go into different classifications.”
He said balloon is up at 1,500 to 2,000 feet for an
average flight.

“It could be a lot higher and could be a lot lower. It all depends on wind direction and wind speed in the direction we are flying in and where we are going.”

He said the pilot’s pays the most attention to the gauge that measures the temperature of the air inside the balloon.

“Most of these balloons out here have a maximum temperature of 250 degrees at the top of the balloon. So you don’t want to go over that temperature in the balloon. If you do, that balloon has to be
inspected again.

“The core of that balloon will be about 400 to 500 degrees in the center of it, but the heat dissipates as it goes to the top. You can control it by venting the crown line (near the top), or by just letting it cool down.

“The balloons are made of rip-stop nylon which is coated on the outside to hold that temperature in the balloon.

“The coating actually wears off. That is the reason you have to replace the envelope after so many hours, but the baskets are still good and will last a long time.”

For more information about the sport of ballooning, visit the Balloon Federation of America Web site at www.bfa.net.