Fly Me Friendly

There were a couple of spare spaces on Rob’s flight in the Yarra Valley this morning so, seeing as we weren’t flying in Melbourne (nasty weather), I took Nykolai with me for a flight

It was great except that Nykolai spent the last 20 minutes trying to hold back an urgent need to go to the toilet. Bit hard when you’re in a basket at 4,000 feet. When we landed, we tossed him out of the basket, at which point he let me know that he really needed to do slightly more than just a quick pee….

Ooops…

I took him over to some bushes and he had a pee, but decided that here was not the place to do a quick squat. Fortunately he managed to hold on until we made it back to the winery for breakfast where he broke a few speed records as he sprinted from the truck to the toilets :)

All good in the end – he’s saying he enjoyed the flight and is happy to go up again. Guess next time he’ll be careful to really try to go to the toilet before we fly…

Spent some time on Saturday with Darren from TroubleChute Rigging learning how to make repairs to parachute/balloon material. Basically, it involves using an industrial strength sewing machine, strong materials, lots of measuring/marking/cutting and some funky ways of folding bits of material around other bits. The end result is a strong patch that covers the area where rips/burns/etc were made in the fabric.

To say that my first one was a dog’s breakfast is being kinda nasty to dog food. The second one, though, was pretty good and, although not up to Darren’s high standards, would have passed inspection if done as a real balloon repair. It’s a good start but there’s still so much more to learn.

This is all part of my studies towards my Maintenance Authority for balloons, an official certification from CASA that will allow me to make, and sign-off on, repairs to balloons. More on that in another posting.

One of the benefits of working with Balloon Sunrise is that occasionally you get a chance to go up and fly over Melbourne in a balloon. If there’s a spare place on board, we try to get a crew member that’s not working to have a go. In addition to being a bonus for the crew, it’s also good for them to see what it’s like up there.

My turn came around again today – what a hoot! We flew from a set of ovals in Kensington to Moorabbin airport (YMMB). A great flight and lots of fun.

I managed to get a few photos and will load them on the site soon(ish).