The Great, February, Rainy Night, Hot Air Balloon Experiment

Sometimes February conspires to provide a taste of spring with damp, warm days fading into misty nights as advection fog rolls off the snow banks and frozen ponds to mingle with a soft drizzle.  On such a mellow evening Cole Palen marshaled his troops to a noble experiment.  His fertile imagination had conjured a plot line for the Sunday air show in which the Black Baron sends a kidnapped Trudy Truelove aloft in a hot air balloon to spot the location of Sir Percy Goodfellow.  What was missing was the essential lighter-than-air craft. Resources, being what they were, a commercial number was out of the question.

No stranger to improvisation in the face of insufficient ready cash, Palen set about accumulating the necessary, alternative paraphernalia.  He inventoried an ancient windmill, two surplus cargo parachutes and several lengths of stovepipe.  The ever-present Aerodrome lumber pile supplied the remainder of what was required and he set out to equal, or perhaps, better the Mongolfiers.

The crew gathering in the gloomy twilight found Palen close by an impressive apparatus.  From the windmill’s conical reservoir (about 4 feet across at the bottom, tapering to about 2 feet at the top and around 6 feet tall) he had fashioned a burner, with holes cut into the bottom allowing for supply air. the narrow end was sealed and a hole cut at the top sufficient to insert a horizontal stovepipe.  The pipe, supported by “X” braces fashioned from left over hanger rafters, extended distant to one side, terminating in a right-angle bend with the open end pointed skyward.  The burner was already smoking away fueled by more hanger project scraps

At the business end of the stovepipe was a Palen masterpiece.  In Cole’s mind a parachute equaled half of a balloon and two of them, sewn together at the circumference to form a sphere, give you the whole schebang. A local seamstress with a heavy-duty sewing machine accomplished the task.  Clipping the shroud lines from one of the parachutes and leading half of each the remaining lines to either end a length of plank created, in his estimation, airworthiness enough for testing.

We were divided into stokers and balloon handlers with each group soon at their tasks.  The sides of the windmill reservoir began to shimmer as the stokers piled on the wood.  The handlers ringed the envelope, supporting it such that the small hole in the top of the chute, now the bottom of the balloon, was centered over the belching stovepipe.  Obligingly, the envelope began to puff, then stretch, finally filling in a very gratifying fashion. Anticipation filled the air as Palen approached the minimal cockpit.

At this juncture several oversights and miscalculations appeared.  All the tramping around and the heat from the burner caused the site to become distinctly swampy and slippery underfoot.  The mist was becoming more rain-like and the absorbent cotton parachutes were starting to accumulate weight.  It also turned out that the fairly open weave of the chutes allowed much of the precious hot air to escape.  Pondering this turn of events, the ever-adaptable Palen had the stokers toss a few of the old tires, always in supply for tie downs and runway markers, into the blaze.  He correctly posited the soot would plug the weave and soon the balloon was, again, looking jaunty and he seated himself for ascension.  By that time, the stovepipe had reached considerable temperature causing the balloon to smolder suspiciously at the point of contact.  In fact, some charring was apparent and Cole allowed as how he did not fancy being aloft on a flaming chariot.  A nearby hand-pump fire extinguisher was pressed into service and a cooling, if intermittent, stream was applied.  While this did the trick, it was hard to control and the excess went the only place it could, straight down onto an increasingly waterlogged, would be aeronaut.  Palen, true to his nature and having the time of his life, ordered more wood and tires.

Then, a crucial threshold was crossed, lift overcame gravity and the contraption began to rise, achieving a couple of feet of altitude.  The cheers of victory were quickly hushed as the balloon, free from a source of heat, lost lift in seconds.  Coincidentally, an inopportune zephyr urged the quickly descending craft in the most unfortunate of possible directions-across the stovepipes and toward the burner.  In a frantic commotion and clamor Palen bailed into the muck and fled the collapsing stovepipe and supports, while the handlers achieved only limited success in keeping the deflating envelope from draping over the burner and igniting.  The rain teamed in earnest and the scene was, suddenly, a steamy, soggy, sooty, splendid quagmire that took a while to sort out.

To deem the enterprise a failure would be to miss the point. The idea, after all, had promise, it had been a wonderful diversion and the event would become part of the growing Aerodrome folklore.  Grimy, mud-caked, soaked to the skin, and starting to chill, we all repaired to Palen’s kitchen for the customary, huge bowls of ice cream that accompanied all such nonsense.  We were extremely pleased with ourselves and with the evening.

Epilogue:  It was the following summer that Cole acquired a single passenger Raven hot air balloon and for a hundreds of Sundays Trudy Truelove did, indeed, take tethered flight to the thrill of thousands of spectators.