37 HOURS FROM STUTTGART TO CHAMBLEY
What do you do when you love ballooning so much that you are slightly disappointed every time you have to go back down to earth?
The answer for us is: Fly longer! ;-) And now that at least one of us has got his gas balloon license, of course we want to try how far – or how long – we can fly on hydrogen. Preparations for such an undertaking are a bit more intensive that for a normal hot air flight, given the perspective that we might be in that tiny basket for several days! Like a fellow Spanish gas balloon pilot once said: “The amount of shit you carry with this is amazing”… and it’s true.
So, in April 2017, we started to prepare for our adventure, always monitoring the weather for a possible slot. Which can be quite frustrating, actually. Our flight to southern Romania on the Easter weekend had to be called off at the last minute, literally – the last thing to do would have been to fill the balloon, but the weather over the Alps simply was not stable enough.
On the weekend of the 20th of May, weather was looking more favourable. A stable high pressure area over southern Germany – what more could you wish for? For us, that would mean taking a swing around the center of it, with the advantage of knowing the area, having all the airspace maps, easy communication with ATC and a short drive home. Well, that was the plan! ;-)
And in fact, the trajectories meteoblue had calculated proved to be quite accurate. We took off on Saturday evening, half past six local time, and flew into the evening, already in radio contact with some ouf our hot air ballooning friends. The first half of the flight really was a ‘memorial tour’ of some of our favourite German balloon events – Heidenheim, Lützelburg, Augsburg, Königsbrunn, the Allgäu, Eglofs… by midday on Sunday, we reached Lake Constance and continued flying alongside, moving on towards the southern Black Forest. As we flew into France late afternoon, thermals already had cost us some bags of sand, and we were curious how many more we would lose to stabilise the balloon at nightfall.
By midnight, we realised that it was too critical to continue flying through the next day, so we decided to land on Monday morning. Also, the direction we were previously flying had disappeared, so we tried the winds at lower altitudes, finding out that they would carry us directly to Chambley, where Europe’s biggest balloon event takes place every other year – another area well known to us. After 37 hours and 13 minutes, we landed with our last water ballast and sand bags (we would have had a lot of other things to throw out nevertheless), being quite satisfied with our first big gas balloon flight – I’m sure you can see the joy on our faces (but the fatigue as well!) ;-)
A flight like this cannot be accomplished by two guys alone. So here go our heartfelt thanks to everybody at our amazing Balloon Club at Stuttgart… not only to our coach, our launch masters and our retrieve, but also to the many many busy bees keeping the balloons, cars and launchsite in shape, backing the administrative side of the club or just supporting us with your lovely messages, wishes and pictures. It’s a pleasure to fly with you! :-)
