An Amazing Aerial View of a Hot Air Balloon Festival
There are no words that properly answer the question "what was it like?" after a morning at a hot air balloon festival. You arrive in the dark, smell coffee and propane, hear the roar of burners, and watch dozens of giant envelopes swell and rise into a pink sky. Then you look up and the sky is full of colour.
A summer morning in New Jersey
The festival that inspired this story is the New Jersey Festival of Ballooning, which first took off in 1983 and for many years has filled the sky over Solberg Airport in Readington each summer. Like most big balloon events, it is half air show, half county fair: food stands, music, children's rides and, twice a day, the main event, the mass ascension, when as many balloons as the weather allows take off together.
The best moments come early and late. Balloons fly in calm air, usually in the first hours after sunrise and the last hours before sunset, when the wind is gentlest. On festival evenings there is often a "night glow", when tethered balloons fire their burners in time to music and light up like giant lanterns.
How a hot air balloon flies
The principle is wonderfully simple. Hot air is less dense than cold air, so a big enough bag of it floats. Propane burners heat the air inside the envelope; the pilot climbs by firing the burner and descends by letting the air cool or opening a vent at the top. There is no steering. Pilots change altitude to find winds blowing in different directions, which is why balloon flights are part science and part art.
Ballooning in brief
- First manned free flight
- 21 November 1783, Paris, in a Montgolfier balloon
- Fuel
- Propane, burned in powerful burners above the basket
- Typical envelope
- Around 2,000 to 3,000 cubic metres for a sport balloon
- Best flying time
- Calm air shortly after sunrise and before sunset
The world's great balloon festivals
- Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, USA: held every October since 1972 and now the largest in the world, with hundreds of balloons filling the New Mexico sky.
- Cappadocia, Turkey: not a festival but a daily spectacle, as dozens of balloons drift over fairy chimneys at sunrise for most of the year.
- Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, England: one of Europe's biggest, held each August since 1979.
- Saga International Balloon Fiesta, Japan: Asia's largest, held over the rice fields of Kyushu each autumn.
Balloons, bets and the Biggest Little City
One of America's best-loved balloon events takes place in a casino town. Every September the Great Reno Balloon Race fills the sky over Rancho San Rafael Regional Park in Reno, Nevada, with around a hundred balloons. Entry is free, the dawn patrol launches in the dark with glowing envelopes, and by breakfast time you can be back downtown under the famous Reno arch, choosing between a buffet and a blackjack table.
Ballooning and wagers also share a literary history. In Jules Verne's 1872 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, Phileas Fogg bets £20,000 at his London club that he can circle the globe in eighty days. Surprisingly, there is no balloon in the book; the famous balloon ride was added by the 1956 film. Real-life record attempts in balloons have attracted plenty of real bets since. For more wagers that sounded impossible and still paid out, read 9 Bizarre Bets That Actually Paid Off, and if Reno has caught your eye, find it in 7 Casino Cities to See Before You Die.
