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2 March 2007
 GEORGETOWN AIRPORT,
Texas
- On 6 February the Apollo CS got to play with a balloon. But it wasn't
your every-day party balloon. This one happened to be a 75,000
cubic-foot balloon, the kind that can fly thousands of feet up into the
air, miles at a time, with people in it.
Mr. Bruce Lavorgna brought out his hot air balloon, that he had promised
to set up for the squadron members. He arrived in this small panel
truck, and I thought, "...but he promised to bring the real thing...
What's this? A toy?" Never mind, we soon saw that it was the real
thing. It's amazing how little balloon and how much hot air you need to
make a humongous hot air balloon.
He had the cadets help with setting up the balloon, while he tested the
burner, talked and gave small demonstrations. It turns out that hot air
balloons work best twice a day. First between dawn and an hour after
dawn, then at the other end of the day, from an hour before sunset until
sunset. The rest of the day warms up the air too much, and the balloon
doesn't do as well.
  Also, when you think "hot air balloon," you imagine an empty balloon
that gets filled with hot air. Not so. First you fill it with cold air
as much as you can, then you heat the cold air inside the balloon. Since
using an open flame is the only easy way to get hot air in the field,
the balloon needs to be filled with air first, or else the flame can
touch it and burn it up.
There
was some wind that day. Not real wind, really, but even a breeze can add
to the work when    you're trying to hold a balloon where you want it. The
Apollo cadets felt confident that they could do this, but the balloon
kept getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Finally it was as big as
Gulliver in Lilliput Land. The Apollo cadets (and senior members, too)
were the Lilliputtians, of course.
The
cold and sleeping Gulliver got some pretty good shots of open flame, and that heated it some, and it started
puffing up.
Then it started to rise a little, and bounced a bit, and finally it
started moving up right over the gondola. The gondola is the basket
where the balloonist rides, together with the gas canisters that he uses
to keep the balloon flying. When the balloon stood up, the cadets put
all their weight on the edges of the gondola, which is really a basket,
while Mr. Lavorgna kept the burner going in short bursts, and that made
the balloon glow like a paper lantern. It was a giant garden party, and
a lot of fun.
   The cadets thought that the balloon was going to take off, with them
still hanging on to the basket, but that didn't happen. The
demonstration lasted about an hour and a half. Everybody there had a
great time, the cadets thoroughly enjoyed it, they were even arguing
over jobs to do with the packing up of the balloon; they all wanted to
be in on it. One cadet even said that his mind was made up: now he wants
to become a balloon pilot.
Article submitted by C/SMSgt
Michael Moody and photos by Capt Arhur E. Woodgate |
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