TransAtlantic Balloon crossing
 

For all North Atlantic Nat-trackers and others.

Ladies and gentlemen,

For those of you plying the North Atlantic over the next few weeks, please be advised that there will hopefully be an attempt to cross west to east by a helium balloon commanded by Deborah (Debbie) Scholes with her partially-sighted husband as crew-mate. The balloon is the first in its class, R77GB and is registered as G-ZOZO. It can be flown as a gas balloon or for the Atlantic crossing, with the cone fitted, as a Rozier balloon. A Rozier balloon gains its lift from a helium cell in its top. Altitude is controlled by a small propane-fired burner that warms the air in the cone below the gas cell. A satellite tracker will enable everyone to watch the balloon’s progress. You can read all about the proposed crossing by googling transatlanticballoonchallenge

Departure will be from Sussex, New Brunswick and is of course wind and weather conditional, but the target date is June 7th, and the crossing may take up to 6 days.

Being an ex Nat-Tracker myself, (long-retired now), I`ve told Debbie about 123.45 and she knows about 121.5 of course, so you may just hear her making a request for a radio relay as you to or fro. I`m sure you`ll help.

Other ladies have made the crossing by balloon, but it`s believed Debbie will be the first to do so `in command`.

Many thanks!

Blimey. Good luck. Will the FR24 call sign be the balloon reg?

I'll listen out, please keep us updated here.

Well if were a choice between the balloon or the middle seat in a 10 across 777 economy cabin, I’m thinking the balloon sounds pretty good 😊

I would take stuck in the hold rather than the balloon. Makes me shudder thinking about it.

Best of luck to them! :ok:

Looks interesting. Wondering where they were headed, I followed the link and found the destination: the eastern side of the Atlantic.

What sort of crossing altitude will Debbie be at ?

The website says varying altitudes to take advantage of different wind directions at different levels in order to "steer". Previous flights had the balloon up to a max of FL 230. Jeez in a 1.75 m x 1.2 m wicker basket Brrrrrrr

Braver people than me. Best of luck Debbie and Mike. I'll be following this, but from the comfort of Terra Firma.

Good luck and all the best.

Balloon challenge

Debbie says they expect to start off between 5,000 and 10,000, and that they could go up into the 20,000s if necessary but it would not be for long due to the temperature. They will vary their altitude to find winds blowing in the desired direction, in other words so they can steer.

Their meteorologist, with whom they should be able to maintain contact, will have an important role to play as the flight progresses.

She doesn`t care where they make landfall on the European side of the pond as that`s in the will of the Gods to a degree, but hopes it will be somewhere `interesting`, like Norway perhaps, or the west coast of France, or northern Spain or Portugal.

Their call sign will be Golf - Zulu Oscar Zulu Oscar, they requested that registration some years ago because it looks a bit like 2020 and that was the year they originally planned to do this trip. But along came Covid, and then last year there was a world shortage of helium, so the windows in those years were abandoned, and here we are now in 2023.

It will be easy to heat such a small space, but... wicker burns! Aiee!!

Why risk this when it has all being done 45 years ago?

"Because it is there!" :ok:

Why do people keep climbing Everest, or rowing across oceans:rolleyes:

Best of luck to them. As a hot air driver I have great respect for my gas colleagues who are happy to spend days in a basket...

A lot of hot air?

The thing is that all the greatest absolute firsts have been done - so now it's down to the first in each & every category - next, first vegan to pedalo the Pacific!

Will they become rich from this? Nope.

Do they know this? Maybe.

Should they be discouraged? No, why?

Will they perish? Possibly, in which case they'll join a lot of others who pushed the envelope.

Good luck with the challenge. A colleague and I attempted to fly to Ireland from the edge of the London CTR back in the early 2000's using a 300,000 cubic foot balloon. We could find no record of a westbound crossing so it was to be an aviation "first". The fuel consumption was higher than expected and we hit severe turbulence over the Welsh mountains causing us to climb and swing right. With our fuel state now doubtful and a projected arrival into the Dublin airspace, we landed (at speed) on a Welsh coastal farm.

We knew it was risky but we planned for every eventuality, including "borrowing" (cough cough) survival gear from Auntie Betty, which was returned and was never missed. It was great fun, all the way from planning with a map laid out on the floor of a Henley curry house to stopping at a favourite Wiltshire pub on the way home for a slap up dinner with the retrieve crew.

I would do it all again, even the small airspace infringement that didn't happen.....honest. Are you planning to dump your empty tanks as you go or take them all the way ? We scrounged our extra tanks and mounted the least valuable on the outside of the basket so they could be jettisoned if needed. The posh titanium tanks were in the centre of the basket for protection. A 50p sheet of orange stickers was handy for marking each empty tank so at a glance, we knew our fuel state.

Don't get your feet wet !