Month: January 2015

  • First flight of the season

    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.

    filling the balloon

    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.

    burning hot air into the balloon

    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!

    up in the air

    Just like magic. Upwards and onwards!

    ground from the air

    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

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

    sun is setting over örebro

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

    What are they thinking

    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…

    treetops

    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

     

  • Cold and Sunny

    Cold and Sunny

    Cold and sunny

    Already a new year, 2015. The “old” 2014 feels suddenly so far away and I hope this year will bring lot of happiness and perhaps some new experiences along the way.

    The weather has been shifting from cold and sunny to not that cold and windy. Not that cold is for me somewhere around zero and cold is in the region of minus 10. I totally prefer the cold and sunny but can´t wait until it turns to warm and sunny. That will probably not happen until April or so, always something to look forward to.

    Anyway, here are some of the snaps from one of the cold and sunny days out on the lake. The girls wanted to go ice skating so of we went down to the frozen lake close to our house. The ice was almost 20 centimeter thick so the risk for it to brake felt quite small. You could probably drive a car out on the ice without any risk and since there were so many other out skating we decided to get out and hope for the best.

    house by the lake

    Location, location, location. The one thing you can´t change one you bought a house. To me this house ticks a lot of boxes, except it isn´t mine.

    sisters ice skating

    Sisters, sometimes they love each other and sometimes not…

    My youngest one has quite recently lost both her front teeth and is patiently waiting until the new ones grows out…

    catch me if you can on ice

    Catch me if you can!

     

    /Thomas Tanisawa