Saskatchewan, that Canadian province with the funny name... somewhere in the middle of the country. It's relatively sparsely populated and not exactly a hotbed of ballooning activity. But for a couple days this spring it was the focus of international attention as the unexpected destination of the world's longest balloon flight.
American adventurer Steve Fossett had launched his Roziere balloon in Seoul, South Korea, breezed across the Pacific and floated into Canada. It was my job, and a matter of some personal pride, to give the world coverage of his arrival.
Fossett's appearance in Canadian airspace took us by surprise. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news service has a computer system that can call up virtually every wire service story filed around the world. We even have a dial-up port that lets me check the wires from home on weekends. But I didn't learn of the flight until he had already crossed the coast of North America.
The phone call from our network headquarters in Toronto was like a thunderbolt on a quiet afternoon. They knew I was a balloonist and they were full of questions. Where was the balloon? Where would it land? Could we even find it? A journalist can never have too broad a background but I never expected my balloon chasing skills to be tested on the job.
Finding Fossett proved to be relatively easy. The last report from the news wires put him in Canadian airspace somewhere east of Vancouver, British Columbia. He would be crossing the Rockies at high altitude. After a few phone calls I ended up talking to the supervisor at the air traffic control center in Edmonton, Alberta. The radar controllers had him; about a hundred miles west of Calgary, over the mountains. He was at 24-thousand feet headed east at about 100 knots.
Finding out where and when Fossett would land proved a bit trickier. Another round of working the phones began. It took about an hour to track down a spokesman for the flight at Loyola University in Chicago. Meanwhile, another check with Edmonton ATC showed the balloon was already east of Calgary, but still headed east at 80 knots. It was 4 p.m. At that speed Fossett would be in Saskatchewan in another two hours with about an hour and a half of daylight left. We put in a call to charter a helicopter.
News organizations from all over North America had taken up the chase and it was getting hard to get through to the people in Chicago. When we did get through again the news was disappointing. The plan was for Fossett to fly through the night and land at dawn somewhere in the United States. Other networks gave up the chase. CBS Chicago had rented a satellite uplink truck, but they called and turned it back.
This was a tremendous let-down, but I was skeptical about the information. A few phone calls to aviation weather and my skepticism was confirmed. The winds at all levels were directly from the west and would hold through the night. There was no way Fossett could get 200 miles of southerly drift to cross the border. The briefer also told me that surface winds in western Saskatchewan were already light and diminishing.
I called Chicago again and found out that the flight support operation was not there but at the Cameron Balloons factory in Bristol, England. That number was already in my personal phone book and when I called, Alan Noble picked up the phone. "You're in luck," he said, "he's landing right in your backyard... at Leader, Saskatchewan."
Now it was a race, not against the other news crew but against time. Leader is a town almost 200 miles from us and our last fix on Fossett showed he was only about 80 miles west of the town and hooking slightly to the south. The balloon was below 9,000 feet and under the radar coverage.
We couldn't get a helicopter, but that turned out to be a stroke of luck as it wouldn't have gotten us there in time. Instead our reporter and camera operator were on board a twin- engine Cessna 310. The reporter told the pilot we had to find the balloon before it landed or we might not find it at all. The pilot obligingly firewalled the throttles and roared off at 200 knots.
Meanwhile we raised the alarm in Leader. I called our contact, the local druggist. "You won't believe what's about to happen in your town tonight," I said. He excitedly agreed to pass the word around the area and turn everyone with a video camera out in the fields. He also agreed to pick up our crew at the air strip.
Our plans couldn't have worked out better. As our plane closed in on Leader, the druggist spotted the balloon about ten miles south of town. He called on his cell-phone and I passed his information on to the chase plane. Our crew spotted the balloon on descent at about 500 feet and we began shooting.
Between our crew and the people on the ground, we got great pictures of a beautiful approach and a stand-up landing; pictures that were seen around the world. Our man in Leader burned up the pavement from the airfield to the landing site and we were there when Fossett stepped out of the gondola to the cheers of a small crowd.
It was a tremendous accomplishment for Steve Fossett. The people of Leader and we at the CBC had an unforgettable evening, and although I was far away, it was easy to get caught up in the excitement. As the story went out on the national newscast I found myself looking around for the champagne? ? ?
Malcolm McLeod is the news assignment editor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's regional television station in the province of Saskatchewan. He is also a homebuilt aircraft owner/pilot and the founder of the Prairie Balloon Group, a club that has been in operation for 19 years in his home town of Regina. McLeod has been Safety Officer at many national and international hot air balloon competitions including the 1992 World Championship in St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec.