I enjoy aircraft and have flown on many types, but never a hot air balloon. I was perfectly happy to wait until the opportunity to hop aboard a hot air balloon simply presented itself, but my wife was not so patient and last year purchased, for my birthday present, a hot air balloon flight. Weather prevented the scheduled flight which I never got around to rebooking until now (I had no choice - the ticket expiry date was 1 year after purchase). I tried to convince my wife to join me, but she insists that there is no way she would ever ride in a basket under a balloon. The weather was perfect this time and everyone enjoyed a great flight.

I took a GPS receiver and a Kenwood TH-D7AG dual band amateur radio transceiver with me on the flight. The VHF band was used to transmit APRS data while the UHF band was used to chat with other amateurs.

Our balloon travelled a distance of
9.0 miles at a max. speed of 15 mph. GPS data indicated that
the launch elevation was 2034 ft,
max. flight elevation was 3092 ft
and landing elevation was 2431 ft.

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and higher resolution image.

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