As crew members we all have certain responsibilities. One of the many
is, obviously enough, chasing the balloon and being there when it lands. But
what do you do if you lose the balloon during the chase? Now don't start
snickering and thinking "that has never (or will never) happen to me." At
some point in your chasing career, you are bound to lose your balloon. Does
your crew and pilot have a procedure to cover such instances? I've crewed
for several pilots over the years and have found that many of them don't.
I've never been able to figure out why-maybe they think that "that will
never happen to me". Flying in New England, as is true everywhere, isn't
all that simple. We have lots of mountains, valleys and heavily treed areas
that a balloon can fly over. This makes for some very challenging chases.
I can remember two instances where the crew lost radio contact with
the balloon and then visual contact. Once we were flying at a festival and
the winds were relatively calm and out of the east. The crew realized that
having winds from this direction would take the balloon into an area none
of us were familiar with. We decided the best course of action would be to
have multiple chase vehicles all with CB's. (Our pilot and primary chase
vehicle use aircraft radios.) Well, needless to say, even having the
multiple vehicles didn't allow us to track our balloon. Of course, all of us
in the crew blamed the occurrence on the fact that "we weren't familiar
with the area."
In both situations, something my chief pilot taught me years ago came into play. CALL IN NUMBERS. What does the pilot or crew do when they are separated from each other? Before launching each flight, our crew chief asks the pilot what the call in number(s) are for the flight. We have four different numbers and use only one or two each flight depending upon who the pilot, crew and crew chief are for that flight. If we are using one of our larger balloons, and thus more than one chase vehicle, all chase vehicle have copies of the numbers and know which one(s) to use in case of an emergency, problem with the vehicle or If they are lost. Since having this system in place, we have never had to leave our passengers waiting for an extended period of time. Nor have we ever had to have them travel back to the launch site in less then ideal conditions with someone else because the crew was unable to find the balloon. In the first scenarios described above, one pilot had a cellular phone in his chase vehicle. He let the other pilots who landed with him use the phone to find their crews. We were on-site In approximately 30 minutes. (Enough time to miss the pack-up.) In the second scenario, the homeowner let the pilot use the phone to call in and we were on-site in less than 5 minutes. So next time the words "I'll never lose the balloon; that can't happen to me" pop into your head when your chasing a balloon, ask yourself just one question: "But what if I do lose the balloon. . . What do I do?"
