Flight Lesson’s from Germany May 2004

The following is a summary of the 3 flights made during a recent trip to Germany  to learn to fly gas balloons.  The instructor was Mr. Willie Eimers.  He is a three time Gordon Bennett Champion. 

At 5:00 am Willie called and said the weather had cleared and we had 45 minutes to get dressed, go to his house to get the balloon and drive the 20 km to the balloon launch field.  It took right at 1 hour to get the balloon ready to fly.  The inflation process was a full sprint by five people to unload the balloon, rig the balloon, fill 40 sandbags, fill it with hydrogen, and load all the people and then take off.  It was not a pretty day, fog, heavy overcast, low clouds and a little breezy.   We took off in about 10 knot wind and flew most of the flight at 30-40 miles per hour.  We flew for 5 hours and traveled about 160 miles.  About 2 hours of this flight was in the clouds as we had to fly over some controlled air space.  It gave me a chance to practice level flying. We used a transponder and spoke to traffic control on many occasions.   For those who never have flown in the clouds it is a neat experience.   There is a relief that you feel when you can see the ground but to be completely surrounded by white is very cool.  Gas balloons just like Hot Air balloons always follow power lines.  I don’t know why it just must be one of those laws of nature. The lesson I learned during this flight was how to use the parachute valve to control your decent.  Willie indicated that there are three pull locations for the valve: 1%, 10% and 100%.  You actuate the valve from 5 – 15 seconds and how far you have pulled it can be determined by what the balloon does.  At 1% you will hear the hissing (for lack of a better description) of the flow of Hydrogen out of the top of the balloon.  Once the decent begins from the loss of gas you can arrest this decent with 1 – 4 scoops of sand.  If you have valved multiple times then the amount of ballast you will need goes up.  Between pulls you must give the balloon 15 full seconds to react.  This seems like an eternity when you are close to the ground.   If you hold the valve open at the 10% level you will hear the hiss of the gas and you will feel a flutter if the parachute valve that radiates down the valve line.  When actuated at the 10% level it will take any where from 1 – 2 full bags of ballast to stop a full decent.   With a 100% actuation the balloon will suck the bottom of the envelope towards the center of the balloon and you will feel a substantial jerk from the contortion of the envelope from the escape of gas.  This is only performed in what would be considered an emergency or at landing when you are 15 feet or less above the ground.     If you do it at altitude it will take 5 – 7 full bags of ballast to stop the decent.     When the first flight was over,   I had made 6 landings and Phil made 4.  I got to make the final landing.  It was a gentle stand up landing in 3-5 miles of wind.  It was a protected field surrounded by tall trees so it was very nice.  Phil’s last approach prior my landing was in 20 mph winds.   Tall Trees can be your friend! 

At 4:00 am Thursday morning Willie called and said the forecast was for clear weather until about 1:00 pm in the afternoon when the Thunderstorms should start popping up.  We were at launch field by 6:00 am.  We were in the air by 7:00 am.  It was a beautiful day to fly.  We had only a few clouds and no haze or fog like the previous flight.  It was my first chance to really see the area.  The yellow fields were everywhere you looked.  It was stunning against the deep green color of the new wheat fields that are planted everywhere else.   Germany is a very pretty country.  I did attempt a splash and dash on one of my approaches but my instructor was not happy with this and quickly dropped some sand to make sure I did not put his basket in a pond along the highway.  During this flight I learned a couple of very important lessons about gas balloons.  The first has to do with co-operation.    In hot air only the pilot touches the controls of the balloons and it is expected that the passengers only pay attention and point out potential obstacles.     It is up to the pilot to operate and land the balloon without help.  In gas ballooning this is not encouraged.  Pilots must still be able to land the balloon but it is considered foolish not to have your passengers ready to drop ballast and or release the drag line so the pilot can operate the valve line and handle the sand scoop at the same time.  It is a safety issue.  This lesson was very difficult for me to comprehend at first.  I did not want to ask anyone for help.  I wanted to do it myself.   What this does is always put you behind the curve.  With help from your passengers or co pilot more resources are available quickly which helps keep the balloon under “your control”.  It is a very important lesson about flying gas balloons.  You must always be ready to give direction to your passengers to drop sand for you. (i.e. a ¼ bag, ½ bag or the whole bag or more etc).  It helps conserve what the pilot has in the sand hopper to complete the final landing procedures and it insures the softest possible landing.  The second part of this lesson is they must not do anything without your knowledge otherwise the balloon will fly on.  There is always that tendency to want to drop just a little more sand to slow your decent down.  This results in the balloon taking off again and a blown approach.  

During this flight I also learned the next lesson of gas ballooning.  That lesson involves patience.  One of Willie’s favorite saying is “you have time”!   This lesson was taught around 12:00 noon when the thermals became active.   I was feeling pretty good about myself at this point.   I had just completed several very good approach and landing attempts as did Phil and we were discussing landing because the clouds were building all around us and it was getting ready to rain just like the forecast had indicated.   Just as I took over the piloting duties the balloon started to rock and roll.  We got hit by the first of several mild but reoccurring thermals.   The balloon started rotating; the bottom of the envelope was being buffeted by the rising thermals so it was making various noises.  The balloon would rise quickly and then fall just as quickly.   I was nervous because I don’t like when the balloon feels like it is out of my control.   Willie kept saying “you have time”.  Which basically means relax and let the balloon fly.  (Even if we were being pushed up or descending after the thermal passed).   I had 8 bags of ballast when I started our final decent to landing.  We were in a very hilly area so I cleared a very large hill and started my decent into an open field in the valley below.   The balloon was in a gentle decent and I had my passengers ready to drop the drag line and ballast if needed.   As I approached the field I cleared the last of the trees and thought this was going to be easy. As soon as I felt we were about ready to land in the field we got hit by a thermal and the balloon when back up the hillside.   I valved at the top of the hill and I made a second approach into the same field and just as before as soon as I cleared the trees and was within about 20 feet of landing the thermal in the field reversed the direction of the balloon and we went back into the trees and up the hill.  These two attempts cost us 5 of the 8 bags of sand we had to land.  Normal pilots need 6 bags to land safely.  Experience pilots generally don’t want to land with less than 5 bags of ballast available.    Now concerned Willie asked me if “I wanted help”.   His second statement to me was “I am pilot now”.   The balloon because of the loss of five bags of sand when back to about 2000 feet above the ground right back into the thermal layer we had just passed through on the top of the hill.  Here is where I learned the lesson “you have time”.   In hot air I was always told to be decisive - to fly the balloon and to land the balloon.  In gas balloons it is a balance between what times of the day you land, how much sand you have available, the conditions you are flying in and how firm of a landing you want to make.   Willie said to relax and watch and feel the balloon.  It rose to the altitude it wanted and then would rise and fall based on the thermals we were encountering.  With each thermal the balloon would rise several hundred feet then it would descend what it had gone up plus a little extra.  With each decent it got closer to the ground without valving any more gas and without having to drop any of our remaining ballast.   This process took about 30 minutes from the time he took over until we landed.  When we were about 150 feet above the ground Willie had us ready to throw the remaining sand out on his command.  I had one full bag and he had 1 plus the sand in the hopper.  Phil was on the drag rope.  My feeling is this would have been a no brainer for a pilot with his skills but a farmer put a two story house right in our glide path to the ground and the basket was now below the level of the roof.   The houses in Germany all have tile roofs and the impact from a large amount of sand breaks the tiles.  Willie said it is very expensive to repair.   So when it appeared we would clip the top of his house Willie told me drop a 1/2 bag of sand.   The problem was we were over the first house, approaching the second house about 30 feet away and passing over the farmer’s car.  We were at about 20 feet above the ground at this point when I dropped 15lbs of sand into his driveway it was about 5 feet from side of the car and right on line with the windshield.  We cleared the house by about 2 feet as the balloon rose from the sand I dropped.  We are now down to 2.5 bags of sand.  We floated about 1000 feet when Willie opened the valve hard to create a steep decent and landed the balloon.  We dropped the drag rope and 1.5 bags of sand.   We landed in a field full of dairy cows with one bag of ballast left in the basket.      Willie later said this was not a desirable landing.  3 bags of sand are not enough to make a safe landing.  He said to never let your self get this low on ballast.  There is just no margin for error.   You never will know what flight or terrain conditions will appear when you need to make your next landing.  Ballast in gas balloons mean safety and options.  No sand means no options.

Saturday was a busy day and it looked like we would not be flying but 5:30 in the afternoon.  Willie checked the current conditions.  The rain had cleared and the winds had died off.  We scrambled to the launch field with a smaller gas balloon only 500 m3.   It took about 45 minutes to inflate and take off.  It was a beautiful evening flight with no less than 8 hot air balloons flying on the horizon.   The maximum wind speed we encountered was about 15 mph.  I landed the balloon after flying 2.5 hours. The winds on landing were about 3 miles per hour.   Phil dropped the drag rope and we landed very gently in an open pasture.   We move the balloon across the street into a field with better access and packed up.   This balloon was fun to fly.  It responded very quickly with just a scoop or two of sand.  We did not have to drop any large amounts of sand with this balloon.  

We flew 15 hours in 3 flights under a variety of conditions.  I learned that gas balloons perform very well in high winds and do have landings in less than 20 mph winds and that above all patience is truly a virtue when flying this type of balloon.  I am still amazed every time I fly gas balloons how different they are from hot air balloons.   I have 5 flights in gas balloons now and 50 hours of flying time.   I still feel I have much to learn but I am confident now I know how to control and land this type of aircraft.   As with any hobby practice is needed so I might be going to Germany regularly to keep up my skills.