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Hot air balloons need light and stable winds for safe
flight operations. These conditions occur most often at sunrise. As the sun
rises it will heat the earth and cause the atmosphere to boil like a pot of
water. That is also why we limit our flights to about an hour of flight. After
an hour the atmosphere begins to boil throwing us around like a toy.
There are three things that will stop us from flying.
High wind
Wind is a balloons biggest enemy. Wind of more than
about 10mph will make the balloon almost uncontrollable. To put a balloon up
you must first fill it with air. This is done by laying the balloon on the
ground and starting a large fan. You must hold the balloon still long enough to
fill it with air before you turn on the burner to stand up the balloon. If you
have any wind the balloon will begin to catch the wind like a giant sail and
begin to drag itself across the field. A balloon can generate as much as
6,000lbs of pulling force in as little as a 12 mph wind. At this time we don't
even want to talk about landing in windy conditions.
Poor Visibility
Balloon flying is a VFR type of aircraft. This
means Visual Flight Rules. These are rules
written by the Federal Aviation
Administration. Not only is it illegal to operate a balloon in poor visibility
but imagine driving your car with your eyes
closed. Your bound to hit something and it wont be pretty. To land a balloon
the pilot must slow the decent of the balloon to get it to level off right at
the ground level. Hard to do when you can not see the ground.
Rain
Generally when you have rain you have weather
conditions that can change dramatically. Here in Florida rain is either driven
by an advancing cold front or by the convective heating of the surface of the
earth by our intense sunshine. In either case the rain will add dramatic weight
to the skin of the balloon forcing the pilot to add extra amounts of heat to
keep the balloon aloft. It is possible for this weight to become so heavy that
it literally forces the balloon into the ground. If the pilot can successfully
land the balloon the damage to the fabric of the balloon will completely ruin
the aircraft.
Want to look at the
weather information we do...
Weather Links.
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