The morning after the Pacific Peregrine landed in a Canadian farmer's field, listeners to National Public Radio's Morning Edition heard Steve Fossett's first words as he stepped from his gondola. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation crew were on the spot thanks to a balloonist and CBC news director in Regina, Saskatchewan. Malcolm McLeod used his inside knowledge of ballooning, ballooning contacts, and news hound training to pull a rabbit out of the hat and get a news crew there for the landing. Chasing a World Record on page 10 relates how CBC was able to scoop the landing.
A little known fact from Fossett's incredible adventure in his Cameron built Roziere was that this balloon had not been his first choice. Fossett first approached Raven Industries about building him a gas balloon for the venture. The same engineer who designed Larry Newman's Earthwinds double balloon had refined his concept to a double balloon above the gondola. As Fossett spoke with two engineers from Raven they convinced him not to do the flight solo. Seems in part that they wanted to go along on the flight. Fossett eventually agreed. The price tag on the balloon venture would be around $2 million dollars. According to one person present at the meeting, Fossett said fine let's each put in $750,000 and go for it. The two engineers didn't have the moneyÑnor sponsors. Fossett went looking elsewhere and the rest is history.
Balloon Chasers
"Balloon pilots have to deal with crash landings, dangerous power lines, and crazy winds.
But it's shootings that worry the chase crew." Phil Berg, Car and Driver magazine, May,
1995. First alerted to this article by a Balloon Life advertiser we went down to the local
newsstand and picked up a copy. Sure enough, there in five pages, eleven color pictures,
and two sidebars the life of ballooning as seen through a chase crew's eyes is brought to
the world of car magazine readers.
Reading the article we were reminded of the Albuquerque Journal article about free media
rides at KAIBF highlighted in this space last November. Of course, there were a number of
inaccuracies in the story as one might expect from a journalist writing about a subject they
didn't understand. The voice of the article tried to make balloonists sound like hicks. Then
again, maybe the author was writing for car magazine readers.
Although we received several calls from alarmed balloonists about the article, it wasn't all that bad. What we couldn't figure out was the writer's fetish for gun toting landowners. "The gun-wielding landowner we're anticipating here (at KAIBF) would not surprise most balloonistsÉ But every bit as threatening is landing near an irate rural resident trying to protect himself with a shotgun from trespassers descending from the sky."
Wow. And here we thought that was as likely as finding a car salesman that agreed to take your first low ball offer when negotiating a new car buy.
