The Flight of SkyQuest 5

We had been waiting almost two years for a single phone call from meteorologist Bob Rice. When it finally came on a blustery Saturday morning in February I was amazed at how quickly our team could move into action. This was only the first of several happenings that would surprise and amaze me over the next 72 hours-long, sometimes sleepless hours that would see our team leader, Dr. Bill Bussey capture four new world records and ten national records in a AX-6 balloon.

Within hours of the first alert phone call from Rice, the rest of the team, friends and volunteers had gathered at Bussey’s balloonport in Longview, Texas to begin final assembly of all necessary gear. A second phone call from Rice about 6 p.m. that evening confirmed a good weather pattern and a decision to "go." Slowly but methodically the balloon and other necessary equipment was loaded, there was a brief break for dinner and a quick run home to pack for those on the launch and Chase One crews, then at midnight Bussey and Chase One left Longview for the all night drive to Chanute, Kansas, the launch site selected by Bob Rice. After many months of preparation, SkyQuest 5 was about to become a reality. Dr. Bill Bussey was going to assault his own world record for distance in the AX-6 category...

Plans for SkyQuest 5 were born almost two years earlier, shortly after Bussey had successfully claimed seven world records in a flight from Amarillo, Texas to near the Canadian border. Flying a 105,000 cubic foot balloon built by Thunder & Colt, the flight convinced Bussey of the validity of "metal" balloons, those built of mylar coated fabrics by Thunder & Colt for the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean crossings. Almost upon landing Bussey says he began considering an attempt to break a world record he had set years earlier in 1987-the AX-6 distance record of 324 miles.

Thunder & Colt US was selected to build Bussey the balloon he would need. It was an AX-6, 56,000 cubic foot envelope built of the same fabric used on the Virgin-Otsuka Pacific Flyer. Fearing potential competitors who might rush to beat him into the sky, construction of the balloon was wrapped in secrecy. It was sewn together behind closed doors at T&C US where even there only a handful of the staff was aware of what was going on. Begun in early summer of 1993 the balloon was ready when Bussey’s first sanction window opened in November. Unfortunately we would sit and wait through first one 90-day sanction and then another, the second stretching into Spring 1994 before it became obvious we would have to wait for another winter, the only time of year that Bob Rice told us we would see the appropriate weather patterns. As the months stretched by, we continued to talk and theorize about the flight which by now we jokingly termed "SummerQuest."

To mate with the envelope, Bussey obtained a basket from T&C UK that had been built for some of Dr. Coy Foster’s early record attempts. It was cut apart, redesigned and welded together again. Constructed of aluminum tubing and padded with pipe insulation from the local hardware store, the "basket" was then wrapped with shrink wrap to provide "solid" sides. The burner was a single stock C-3 model borrowed from Mark Bowie of Greenwood, Mississippi...

After an all night drive, Bussey and Chase One arrived in Chanute about 10 a.m. Sunday morning. There they checked into a local motel, selected a city park for the actual launch site, visited the local police department (so they would not be alarmed at the odd preparations set to begin the next morning about 3 a.m.) and were discovered by the local newspaper.

During his Saturday evening call, Bob Rice selected Chanute as the launch site based on the weather system he saw developing. He further identified the track as directly between Little Rock, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee, on to Tupelo, Mississippi, over Birmingham, Alabama and virtually straight toward Jacksonville, Florida. Except for a slight turn north at the end of the flight he hit the nail on the head two days before the flight launched-amazing me and many others.

Back in Longview, I had begun the task of sending out a release advising various media, supporters and others that the we were staging for launch. At 11 p.m. I moved into the balloonport (which would serve as communications center for the flight), set up the computer and crashed on the sofa with the alarm set for 2:45 a.m.

The team awoke at 2:30 a.m. and within 30 minutes preparations for launch were underway in Chanute and Longview. As the launch team of Bruce Bussey, Steve Jones, Edwin Bumpass and Mike Crawford prepared and inflated the balloon, complete with more than 170 gallons of propane, Bill Bussey set about checking the GPS and barograph-two instruments vital to verification of the records. In Longview, Glen McCoy was leaving town in Chase Two, heading east on I-20. In Shreveport he would pick up David Bellew and continue on toward Greenwood, Mississippi where he hoped to intercept the balloon. (We had decided on two chase teams with the expectation that Chase One might have trouble staying with the balloon. Our concern was the lack of major roads for Chase One to follow- not the snowstorm and Bussey’s 100+mph speeds that eventually left them more than 6 hours behind the balloon.) A third chase team, this one aerial, would launch later in the morning. The plane, piloted by Jim Herschend with Mike Mills, was the only chase able to remain with the balloon throughout the flight.

When designing the balloon, T&C engineer Mark Broome had told Bussey it should fly 8 hours for certain, probably would go ten hours, and might stretch to 12 hours. This information, coupled with a desire to be on the ground an hour before sunset meant a launch between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m. Precisely at 4:24 a.m. SkyQuest 5 took to the sky without incident. Only a light snowfall marred the otherwise perfect beginning to the flight. It was a snowfall that would play a major role in the chase as the launch team, now Chase One packed up and went off in chase of the balloon. They would drive through a blowing snowstorm for the next 8 hours, emerging from it finally near Tupelo, Mississippi. Within two hours of launch Chase One was already about 90 miles behind and would never catch up.

"Immediately after launch the most critical thing in my mind is to keep the balloon climbing, slowly climbing," Bussey explained later. "At that point you are at maximum gross weight and any type of descent could possibly go into an uncontrolled descent. So I’m watching the flame, being certain I don’t have a flame-out. I want the balloon climbing at all times at a reasonable rate (200 fpm) not a fast rate, but a reasonable rate because with all that fuel on board I’m flying a bomb."

As is often the case in record flights it wasn’t long before the first obstacle presented itself. While climbing to altitude Bussey encountered a strong inversion layer at about 4,000 feet. It was an inversion layer that led to the failure of one of Earthwinds early attempts when, failing to punch through the inversion, they brushed a mountainside after launch from Reno, Nevada.

"I had never dealt with an inversion layer that restricted my flight," says Bussey. "This was the first one that wouldn’t allow me to penetrate it. At first I thought I must have let off the burner. But as I made subsequent attempts each time I would be climbing at about 400 feet per minute, then I would see my variometer needle start to fall to where I was in level flight and then descending at 200 or 300 feet per minute and my burner (liquid fire) had been on the entire time and the temperature would climb about 30 or 40 degrees. After doing this a few times I realized I was trying to punch through an inversion but the balloon just did not have enough lift."

With that realization, Bussey made a conscious decision to fly the balloon level until he burned off enough fuel to lighten the balloon and increase it’s lift. When he was finally able to get through the inversion the balloon continued to climb at an easy rate. The decision to continue climbing was based on ground speed readouts from his GPS unit. Prior to the flight Bussey had set 50 mph as a minimum speed parameter he would accept for the flight. As he climbed to altitude the speed also increased from 40 to 50 then 60 mph and faster. At just over two hours into the flight Bussey had reached 15,400 feet altitude and was cruising at 87 mph. Eventually his top speed would reach 108 mph and the average speed for the entire flight would reach 80+ mph. At this rate Bussey knew he had beaten his old record after just six hours into the flight. From that point on the question was not if he would beat the record, but by how much?

While Bussey was above the snowstorm and enjoying his unexpectedly high ground speeds, those of us on the ground were wondering just where he was. The balloon was travelling so fast, he outran Chase One and all radio contact with the balloon was lost. This happened about 7:30 a.m. It would be three long hours before we heard from Bussey again. To make matters worse, his aircraft radios froze making it impossible for him to communicate with air traffic control at Memphis Center. At the communications center in Longview we were discussing with Chase One whether Bussey might have been forced down by weather. At the exact moment he was flying between Little Rock, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee all we could see on our weather radar was a huge snowstorm. Fortunately Bussey was well above this weather and outrunning it.

Chase Two with Glen McCoy and David Bellew was in Greenwood, Mississippi by mid-morning and with assistance from Mark Bowie were able to maintain contact with the balloon for about an hour. After that they found themselves in the same situation as Chase One-being left behind by the speeding SkyQuest 5 and again radio contact was lost as Bussey passed over Birmingham, Alabama. At approximately 1:30 a.m. radio contact was briefly re-established as the balloon and Bussey were nearing Columbus, Georgia. This time it was a wrecker driver in Macon, Georgia that Bussey was able to contact on the radio who relayed communications to Longview by telephone. We would not hear from Bussey again until he was on the ground.

It was at about this point that Bussey was enjoying a rare view from a balloon. He reported later that he could see both the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. In Longview, concerned that both chase teams were hours behind the balloon (and not knowing the chase plane was with the balloon) we decided to roll a third chase on the ground. Duane Clark of Taylors, South Carolina had agreed to assist and at about noon I called and sent him south into Georgia. The track of the flight remained consistent with the one Bob Rice had identified two days earlier and we anticipated a landing in a little triangle of southeast Georgia/northeast Florida bounded by Valdosta, Georgia; Waycross, Georgia and Jacksonville, Florida. Earlier in the morning Duane Clark had called to say he had collected weather reports from that area and based on low level and surface winds he was convinced Bussey would turn north once he descended to land and would be landing near Savannah, Georgia. As communications director for the flight it was my job to coordinate the chase crews and after such a long flight, I wanted someone there with him as soon as he touched down. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have listened to Clark because he called the landing site almost exactly.

With Clark driving south out of South Carolina and Chase One and Two still hours behind, Bussey suffered the only real scare of the flight. "I could see Jacksonville, Florida and knew it was getting close to time to begin my descent. I could also see a cloud line running off to the northeast and my mind told me this was the shoreline," Bussey said later. "Upon a second look I realized that cloudline was about 100 miles offshore and the actual shoreline looked as if it was directly below me!"

Bussey immediately put the balloon into a terminal descent but the balloon would only fall at about 700 feet per minute. Concerned this would not get him down in time he opened the valve again and finally achieved a descent rate of near 1,000 fpm. (Bussey’s actual response upon realizing the nearness of the coastline was to say ‘Oh S----’ and if you examine the barograph trace you can see where the terminal began. This has become known as the O.S. line.)

"I took it right down to the trees," says Bussey, "and these were probably 50 foot tall pine trees, and the wind was blowing about 10-12 and gusting. The balloon was very light and had no internal pressure so it was hard getting the balloon to settle down. I flew probably five miles over nothing but solid woods. I wasn’t worried about getting the balloon down, but I was worried that I might damage the balloon. So I said to myself I should take it all the way to the shoreline, then I thought better of it and decided I had the record, the thing to do was get down, be safe and get it over with."

It was 3:43 p.m. when the phone rang in Longview and I heard, "Glen, this is Bussey. I’m down and safe. Let me tell you where I am." Bussey had landed about 15 miles south of Savannah just across Highway 17, the old coast highway. Jim Herschend and Mike Mills in the chase plane watched and photographed the near stand-up landing, then landed their plane and were with Bussey about 30 minutes later. Duane Clark arrived less than an hour after touchdown. Chase Two was about four hours away and Chase One was still six hours behind. The flight had lasted eleven hours and nineteen minutes, covering 892 miles, setting four world records for distance in AX-6,7,8 & 9 balloons and setting 10 US national records for distance in AX-6-15 balloons.

The unfortunate news came when we realized the world record for AX- 10-14 balloons was only 913.8 miles. Bussey landed with more than 30 gallons of fuel left, enough for another 4-5 hours estimated flying time. Had he not run out of land, and an hour later out of daylight, there is little doubt he could have flown on to claim an additional 5 world records. A few more miles and this flight in a small 56,000 cubic foot balloon would have been longer than any other hot air balloon flight in the world, except for Lindstrand and Branson’s oceanic crossings. But the goal had been to beat one, his own AX-6 record set 8 years earlier; this he had clearly done.

In the aftermath of the flight congratulations poured in from all around the world. However, none more impressive than a fax from Bob Rice who called the flight one of the most impressive in modern history, quite a compliment from the man so closely associated with historic balloon flights such as the first Atlantic crossing by Double Eagle II and the first hot air balloon crossings of the Atlantic and Pacific. "What impressed me about the flight is that Bussey got so much out of so little. When you take a tiny balloon like this one and fly it for such a long distance, that’s phenomenal."

Rice also credited Bussey’s patience for waiting more than a year for the right weather system. Rice says patience is absolutely necessary for such record flights. "It’s fundamental," says Rice. "When you’re trying to do something that’s never been done before-which by definition is what a record flight is-you have to wait for the right weather. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with people who understand that."

So who deserves the credit, the weather man or the pilot? "Well," continued Rice, "it’s my choice of a weather pattern and the pilot’s decision to fly it!"

For Bussey the flight had two memorable moments. "The first was sunrise. It was dark and I was on top of the clouds and when that sun comes up it’s white and pretty and it starts warming up and is just beautiful. That, and when my GPS read 100 mph ground speed I was really excited, I knew then we had the record."

Bussey also had high praise for those who built the balloon. "I know that it’s a definite advantage to have the right balloon for these kinds of flights and Thunder & Colt is way ahead of the game there." Will there be a SkyQuest 6? "Well, I’m always thinking," says Bussey. "I’ll let you know next year...

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