One by one, each balloon comes to life, breathing in the cool air the fans provide them.
Suddenly, the balloons are gone, taking with them passengers that are experiencing the same miracle of flight that started in France ?in 1783.
This past weekend was the second year for the Kiwanis Club of South Central Indiana’s Balloon Fest this weekend at Monroe County Fairgrounds. The event raised money for the club’s projects and affiliates to help improve the Bloomington community.
Bill Oliver said if you close your eyes, you can’t even tell you are being lifted off the ground by a giant balloon.
Oliver has been a pilot for 39 years, and this year’s Kiwanis ?Balloon Festival was another opportunity to be a part of what he called a choreographed dance of balloons in the sky.
“I taught a lot of these guys,” Oliver said, glancing around the room where the pilots would be briefed before an early morning flight.
Though the wind and clouds kept the balloons grounded that morning, he said the night flight would be better.
“We’re very sensitive to that kind of thing,” Oliver said, pointing to the tops of trees that were barely rustling in a breeze.
Pilots must look to other balloons, smoke, trees, flags and even the surfaces of ponds to determine the wind speed and direction, Smith said.
Oliver said the technology has improved greatly since he began flying. His Oliver Winery balloon and 42-by-72-inch basket can carry six people anywhere from 500 to 18,000 feet in the air.
Warren Smith has also been flying for decades. He said he started flying planes about 30 years ago and took up hot air balloon piloting 15 years later.
When he was learning to fly, the instruments were far cruder, and learning to control a balloon is difficult enough as it is, he said.
Smith said flying a hot air balloon is comparable to driving a semi in terms of control.
“We can’t steer the balloon left or right,” Smith said.
It’s this big mass that you can only move down and up, Oliver said. The wind decides the rest of your journey.
“You gotta be way ahead of it,” ?he said.
Fast reaction times are vital to flight because there can be up to a 10-second delay from the time an action is executed to the time the balloon responds, he said.
If you are close to the tree line, you don’t always have 10 seconds to spare.
“It gets really tricky when it’s windy,” he said.
The wind coupled with the hilly terrain makes for some difficult flights at times, he said.
“Being comfortable in more wind over time is the biggest challenge,” Oliver said.
Other than learning control, Oliver said pilots learn the basics of safety and complete 10 hours of flight time to get their license.
It takes hundreds of hours to truly become comfortable with the wind, he said. The license is more of a “license to learn.”
But Oliver’s interest in balloons stretches far beyond his time in training. He said when he was in grade school, books about balloons and flying fascinated him.
The ability to go up in a hot air balloon and not know where you are going, that ultimate escape, is what drew him to the pastime.
“I think that’s just a fantastic feeling,” he said.
Oliver said he was the child who always wanted to be on top of the highest building, the tallest bridge — anything to get his feet off the ground.
Now, as a pilot, he said he is still amazed by the magical and impossible concept of taking off in a flying basket. The complete lack of acceleration leads to a feeling of being lifted off the ground.
“Well, we spend all of our lives looking up at trees,” Smith said. “Now, we get to look down at them.”
Oliver said he has landed in a variety of interesting places. Once, he dropped in at a child’s birthday party because conditions were right to do so. He said when the balloon is only 500 feet in the air, he can talk to people in yards as he passes over them.
Friday, he said he flew over a wedding party asking him to land.
Smith said when looking for a place to land, it is best to find somewhere that looks friendly and is relatively accessible by main roads.
“The landing site kind of chooses us,” he said.
Some people welcome the surprise of a hot air balloon landing on their property, and some don’t, Smith said. He said when the first hot air balloon was sent up by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783, it was met with a pitchfork-wielding farmer.
After that first encounter, all pilots make sure to carry a bottle of champagne with them as a peace offering to landowners.
When the landowners don’t show up, however, a pilot never lets the champagne go to waste and instead uses it to celebrate a successful flight and a safe landing.
Interacting with people is one of the best parts of flying, Oliver said.
“I just like flying with other balloons,” he said, and the community of pilots is ?close-knit.
This is Oliver’s second year at the Balloon Festival, and he said he is happy to be back and flying in Bloomington for its scenery and ample landing space.
“This is really a special place to fly,” he said.
