Visit To A Balloon Factory
A nice article for General Aviation
Pilots , introducing them to ballooning. This article is reproduced in full as
published in the GASCO Flight Safety magazine (Autumn 2001), with a little bit of updating.
Flight Safety regularly includes reports
of accidents and incidents from all branches of General Aviation. Unusually,
this issue includes a report of a ballooning incident (it led to damage to a
chimney), but even minor incidents at this level are infrequent. My researches
so far have failed to reveal when there was last a fatality in UK ballooning
and British balloonists are wont to tell you that statistically their form of
aviation is even safer than flight in an airliner. If that is so, then it must
be by far the safest type of aviation practised by our members, saving only
model flying.
In addition to being safer, it is also
cheaper than most other GA activities. A four person balloon costs, new, around
£25,000 and operating costs, including maintenance, work out at around
£120 to £150 per hour. A team of at least four
people is needed to launch, fly and recover and this requirement often leads to
balloons being owned by groups. This also serves to reduce the costs per person
considerably. Alternatively, it is not very difficult to defray all your
capital and operating costs by the simple device of recruiting a commercial
sponsor. Balloons are probably the finest advertising hoardings
going.
To learn more about ballooning generally
and its safety aspects in particular, I called on Cameron Balloons Ltd. in
Bristol and met Hannah Cameron, who deals with public relations. She is an
experienced balloon pilot and spends much of her flying time in instructing
others. The size and success of this family business left me considerably
impressed. They manufacture about one balloon a day and are easily the largest
balloon manufacturers in the world. Some 85% of their product is exported and
they have another factory in Dexter Michigan in the USA. The business was begun
exactly 30 years ago by Don Cameron, Hannah's father, who has particular
abilities in engineering and financial prudence (he is a Scot). The Bristol
factory now employs some 120 staff including designers, art work specialists
and teams of machinists, many of whom used to work in the clothing industry
that is shrinking so rapidly these days.
Rather like the aerospace industry,
balloon manufactory has undergone radical consolidation in recent years, during
which Cameron Balloons have taken over Thunder & Colt, Sky Balloons
International and Lindstrand Balloons. The identities, the particular design
qualities and the existing staff of these other manufacturers have largely been
retained so that each can play to its individual strength. Whenever you read of
yet another ballooning exploit, the chances are that the actual balloon was
made by Camerons. The Breitling Orbiter 3 circumnavigation of the world in 1999
by Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones was on board a Cameron R-650 Roziere
balloon.. David Hempleman-Adams's 1241 mile flight close to the North Pole last
year was in a Cameron R-90 and Anulfo Gonzalez's crossing of the South Pole was
in a Cameron Concept-60. You can confidently to expect to hear of many more
exploits in Cameron balloons in the near future as there are other projects in
hand. Inevitably, with such success in both exporting and innovative design,
awards tend to be bestowed upon the company in profusion. The Charles Green
Salver was presented at the factory in Bristol by Her Majesty the Queen on
behalf of GASCo members, the British Balloon and Airship Club. At the Royal
Aero Club in 2000 His Royal Highness, the Duke of York presented Don Cameron
with the Gerald Frewer Memorial Trophy and members of the Cameron Design Team
with a RAeC diploma. Other recent awards include the Queen's Award to Industry,
the Prince Philip Design Award and the Lowell Thomas Award from the prestigious
international Explorers' Club.
In the course of my factory visit, I
learned some of the essentials of hot air balloon manufacture. The loads of the
envelope are all borne by the tapes that are sewn in at the joins between the
fabric gores and these tapes can typically withstand stresses of around one and
a half tons. In addition to the vertical tapes there are horizontal tapes that
are less visible because they are sewn on the inside of the envelope. At the
crown there is a parachute valve operated a by red parachute operating line
that is led down to the basket. This serves to collapse the envelope after
landing so as to ensure that the balloon stays down once it has touched down.
The fabric of the gores is generally a double rip stop synthetic material in a
tartan weave and this offers lightness, strength and considerable resistance to
damage; it also has a working temperature of 100 deg C. Balloons have come a
very long way since the Montgolfier brothers' canopy of linen paper. Differing
specifications of material are used in different locations and on different
balloons. The material used has a fundamental effect on the life and
performance of the canopy and Camerons reckon that their fabrics lead the field
by a good margin. Baskets made of wicker and cane are still by far the most
popular type, although, if you are thinking of riding the jet streams of the
upper airspace, you will probably want suspended beneath your Roziere a gondola
of Kevlar and carbon fibre which can be pressurised if you so desire.
The typical useful life of a balloon
envelope is around 400 or more hours, but the actual life will depend
considerably upon how it has been treated. Abrasion, dampness, careless packing
and storage are the enemies; people who own yachts will recognise similar
enemies as regards the life of sails. Balloons intended for frequent use, such
as passenger balloons, will be built with stronger fabrics and enjoy a longer
useful life. Eventually an envelope will begin to become porous, and to lose
its colour so that the owner will be thinking of a replacement envelope costing
around £7000 for a four person balloon. Commercial balloons require a
professional 100 hour check and/or an annual. Typical subjects for inspection
are the integrity of the tapes, the fabric, the stitching, the flying wires and
the basket. Private balloonists can carry out their own inspections if they
choose but many prefer an independent inspection if only for the benefit of a
lower insurance premium.
The training for a balloonist pilot's
licence will seem fairly undemanding for pilots of other sorts of aerial
devices, but bearing in mind how weather dependent ballooning is (Pilots under
Training usually fly in surface winds of 5 to 8 KTS) the training period is
likely to be much the same as in other GA activities. Cameron Balloons suggest
three to twelve months as being likely. There are CAA ground exams in air law,
navigation, meteorology, systems and human performance and holders of other
types of pilots' licence will be entitled to some exemptions. The BBAC will
also advocate a Landowners' Relations Course. Flying training calls for a
minimum of 16 hours, with 20 to 40 being more typical and these culminate in a
Recommendation Flight, followed by an Examination Flight. The licence is issued
by the CAA on the recommendation of BBAC.
The main control system on a hot air
balloon is the gas burner. Open the taps to rise and turn them off to sink.
That seems simple enough compared with all that Power, Attitude, Trim stuff
that you meet with aeroplanes, but the Big Issue with balloons in the
considerable delay between operating the control and getting any reaction.
Balloons have enormous inertia and it is clear that a balloon pilot has be
continually anticipating and making control inputs that will prove appropriate
to the state of affairs that will prevail at some time in the future. All
aviators are familiar with the perils of over correction, sometimes leading to
the dreaded Pilot Induced Oscillation, and I can easily imagine a student
balloon pilot, sensing that the rate of descent to land is too high, anxiously
piling on the coals, causing the balloon to rise rapidly some five to fifteen
seconds later, leading to a fearful shutting down of the burners for too long,
eventually causing an even greater rate of descent - and so on. Meanwhile the
wind is carrying the balloon beyond the selected landing field towards a belt
of trees. With practice the trainee will learn anticipation and refinements
such as smudging in heat gently, releasing hot air from the envelope and
changing direction by using differing wind vectors at different
heights.
Like most other sorts of aviation, it is
in the take offs and landings that the greatest perils lie, but the saving
grace of ballooning is that provided that it is carried out in light winds
everything happens slowly and gently so that mistakes may prove embarrassing
but seldom cause serious injury. Mid airs between balloons are frequent at
balloon rallies and are of no account whatsoever. Compare that with the careful
deliberations of our AirProx Board over air misses between aircraft that were
maybe a quarter of a mile apart, and you can get some idea of how ballooning is
often a relatively more relaxed activity than some other forms of aviation. If
you are a powered pilot, however, do not imagine that a close encounter with a
balloon is of no account. The propwash and/or vortices from a powered aircraft
can cause a serious upset for a hot air balloon, so please stay well away.
GA pilots do it for the fun, the
excitement, the adventure and the camaraderie and all these elements are to be
had in abundance in ballooning. The cost is small and the degree of safety is
impressive. I believe that the attractions of ballooning could well tempt
pilots of other sorts of aircraft to look seriously at this interesting
alternative.