Tag: Balloon

First flight of the season

It´s not that often you got the chance to fly balloon during the winter season but then all of a sudden the opportunity appears!

Peter, one of my friends is complementing his US flight certificate with a Swedish one and that includes (luckily for me) some “training” flights. We headed out to the town of Örebro to meet the instructor and prepare for the flight. The weather was really nice. Scattered clouds, a shining sun and the ground covered with snow set the scenery for this very special flight.

Time to fill the balloon with air. A lot of people think that you use the burners on the basket to fill the balloon with hot air. That is correct but to begin with, you start to fill the balloon with “normal” cold air from two large fans. The purpose is to give the balloon its initial shape and also to give room for the hot air from the burners.

And now it’s time to add some heat! Since it’s the temperature difference inside the balloon compared to the outside air temperature that creates the force to lift, it goes very quickly to make it fly in the winter. The air temperature outside was -2 and the heat from the burner is far from that. It took under a minute to get the balloon to rise from the ground!

Just like magic. Upwards and onwards!

Seen from above all the ordinary things not even noticed from the ground, creates the most amazing shapes and patterns. Just to see how the color changes with the season, time of day and weather is spectacular. It makes you feel very small and acts as a reminder that there are so much out there. Sometimes it is just under your nose, you just have to lift your head to be able to see it.

I like long stretched shadows and snow makes the perfect backdrop!

Swooping in over the rooftops at the same time as the suns final effort to glow is just epic.

I wonder what the cows thought of the balloon. If this was a movie you would have seen them running from one side to the other while staring at us…

Finally after over two hours of flight it was time for us to land and get our feet back on the ground again. Luckily we didn´t land among the trees in the picture… Well on the ground again, after wrapping up all our equipment a long day had come to an end and we headed back for some well deserved food and sleep. Hopefully we will be back up in the air as soon as possible!

/Thomas

January 27, 2015
Malcolm taking a leap of faith

Flying balloon with Malcolm B

So this is a series of photos from a movie shoot with the Swedish rap artist Malcolm B. This is one part that is going to end up in a coming music video starring Malcolm B.

Today’s mission is to climb to 9000 feet and that altitude, Malcolm will be doing a parachute tandem jump from the balloon. Quite spectacular and not that many persons have made jumps from a hot air balloon, especially at 9000 feet. On top of that, this will be Malcolms first jump ever…

All photos are taken with Canon 5d II and EF 24-70 f/2.8L

First balloon takes to the sky. This one is filled with helium and is only used to see the wind direction and speed as the balloon takes to the sky. It is quite often great difference in both wind speed and direction depending on the altitude. It´s like the wind exists in different layers on top of each other and not as on big block of air above the ground.

Some of the film crew inside the balloon to take some photos before the air inside gets too hot.

And here comes the heat that will make everything fly. I think this balloon produces aprox 3.000.000 watt of heat and my stove at home 3000…

Maceo is al set for the ride of his life although he looked a little bit too calm to me. He will be dangling his feet strapped in this harness to take stills and video shoots from outside the balloon… at 9000 feet…

Here is a better picture of the world’s highest swing. The ropes is attached to the top of the balloon and then goes down on the side to the harness. Once we leave the ground there is nothing in the way between him and the basket. Everything for a clear shot and no way to get him to the basket until we are on the ground again.

Malcolm is trying to keep the demons away from the head… “look cool, I can do this!”. Aint no wifey doesn’t look that convinced… but he was cool!

This is the face of a man thinking, “Oh my god, this is it…”

Take off. We started first and the other team is following close behind. In just a minute or so everything get so small so fast!

Maceo is preparing. This around 2500 feet so we are quite close to the ground. I can imagine that he felt kind a small sitting there with nothing to hold on to.

We are now getting close to our jump altitude so now it is time for the jumpers to get the right mind set.

“Are you sure about this?” It was a little bit hard to make contact with Malcolm. He was so “concentrated” (not scared to death at all…)

We got clearance to make the jump so this is it!
Since I didn´t have a parachute, there is no pictures from the actual jump…

Landed safely on the ground. Everyone was releaved and happy after another great flight with a lot of great photo and video material for the film crew.
It was late and it was cold. We did however decided to move the balloon after landing to on with the heat again!

Malmcol B and Peter from the team Peak Experience.
This was a great day with a lot of great people doing what they love to do!

/Thomas Tanisawa

January 7, 2014
Low flying

Low flying balloon over Västerås

Short trip to Västerås for another exiting flight with the Rabbit-balloon! We did a quite long flight, over 2 hours instead of the normal 1-1,5 hours due to the absence of wind. People often think that the perfect weather for a balloon trip would be when the wind doesn´t blow at all. This would be true if you didn´t have to plan where to land. Since you can´t steer the balloon at all the pilot need SOME wind to be able to predict where he will land. During this flight there winds was almost nonexistent so we drifted everywhere before we finally found a good spot to land on.

Photos taken with Canon 5D II and EF 24-70 F/2.8L

Turn on the heat!

John, the first one to leave the balloon at 3000 feet…

Coming in low over Västerås. Might be a little bit to low…

Spectators cheering at us from bellow.

A small aircraft did some really close passing´s.

Safe on the ground again!

/Thomas Tanisawa

July 11, 2013
Flying hot air ballon with parachute jumpers

Another day with Aros

This day was spent at Aros parachute club in Västerås for an exciting event. We were going to arrange parachute jumps from a hot air balloon. So off we went to Aros in Västerås with a big hot air balloon and meet up with some super exited skydivers. After some preparation and planning we went off to the starting point.

Canon 5D, 24-50 f/2.9L

This kitchen at the club looked like it was in need of some love and care, or at least a sign saying “Your mother doesn’t live here. Clean up by yourself!”

The balloon is starting to come in to shape. This is taken from inside of the balloon before we start filling it with hot air. To start with you only use two big fans, just to get the initial shape up…

…then comes the heat and there is a lot of it!

This is right after takeoff and the ground getting smaller quite fast!

The first brave make his final preparation before taking a leap of faith.

Then there was a wing suite jumper to dive outside of the balloon basket!

The sun started to set over the beautiful landscape as jumpers left the balloon.

This is what it looked like below the balloon. 1000 meters up in the air doesn’t give you much time to correct any errors on the way down…

Can you spot the two skydivers in the air?

Flying in over the city of Västerås. We had a really lovely flight and our three passengers that didn´t jump (they weren’t supposed to do that either) enjoyed it a lot!

This is the not so fun part of flying balloon… waiting outside for the transport to arrive surrounded by millions of mosquitoes…

But flying hot air balloon is worth it!

/Thomas Tanisawa

August 6, 2012