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
