View Full Version : Balloon on a wire...
mary meagher
26th Mar 2012, 12:25
Most will have seen it on the BBC, a balloon hanging from high tension electricity wires.....hung there quite a while, while the emergency services made sure that the power was turned off.
Only slightly more comfortable than being stuck in a lift, what?
Pegpilot
26th Mar 2012, 15:24
Just up the road from me in Northants, Mary. Pretty scary stuff. Reminds me of a former fellow glider pilot who ended up suspended from the wires he hadn't spotted on the approach to a field landing a few years ago. The emergency services had him out of his SF27 and on the ground within the hour and he and his retrieve crew then retired to a Little Chef cafe a few hundred yards away. The staff, obviously noting his shaken state, invited him to sit down and calm down, but then lamented "we'd offer you a cup of tea, luv, but I'm afraid the power's gone off.......". Whether our hero chose to 'fess up or not is not recorded...
Paraglider and hang-glider pilots seem to do it on a fairly regular basis.
Alas I didn't see it, but one of my old hang-gliding colleagues got caught up in some lower voltage wires, which set his glider on fire. As his harness burned through, he was dropped a short distance to the ground, then scrambled to safety. Seconds later the power came on again, frying the wreckage and dropping it on the spot he had just vacated.
After I left, someone managed to shut down the east-coast main line for several hours by landing in the overhead lines. Aside from being somewhat antisocial, I always wondered whether they charged him for it. Never got to ask.