It gets worse!
He was one of only a few commercial balloon pilots in nz,
apart from being "high" he did not hold a valid medical, so his cpl balloon was invalid.
I can remember clearly the same chap saying to me ,that we were only amatures because in those days there was no pilots licence needed to fly a balloon with an airborne heater.
I only have 150 hours in hot air balloons, but never had an incident nor accident