What's Ballooning without a Basket?

The scene is Paris, France. It is November 21, 1783. Pilatre de Rozier and an infantry officer, the Marquis d’Arlandes embark upon the first "manned flight" in history. The balloon they are riding in lifts off from the gardens of La Muette and after 25 minutes settles back to earth on the Butte-aux-Cailles, near what is today the Place d’Italie.

The great French aviator Charles Dollfus authored one of the first modern history texts on balloons in 1960. In his book, Les Ballons he described the aerostat, the Montgolfier, used on that historic flight.

The aerostat conceived by Etienne Montgolfier was 2200 cubic meters in volume, 16 meters in diameter and 20 meters high. A kind of circular gallery was formed around the base of its wide neck. This was a wicker balcony, with two baskets set opposite each other. There the first aeronauts stood. They kept the fire alight by adding straw to the furnace suspended beneath the neck, or appendix of the balloon.

If the Montgolfiers brought us wicker, along with the rest of ballooning, it was another Frenchman, physicist Jacques Charles, who would hit upon the design that would serve balloonists well into modern times. It was upon the construction of his second hydrogen balloon (called by the French a Charlieres) that Charles developed an envelope built of curved panels, tapered top to bottom (gores), which gave the balloon the look of a peeled orange. To the envelope was attached a wicker basket. Its load was carried by cables interwoven with the wicker and attached to the balloon via a load ring (read burner frame for future hot air balloons).

Ed Yost and Don Piccard flew this
"basket" in the first crossing by hot air balloon
of the English Channel in 1963. the "basket" is
on disply at the Musee des Balloons.
Chateau de Balleroy, France

However, once Raven Industries (and soon thereafter Piccard, Semco and others) began to market ballooning as a sport they returned to the tradition of the wicker basket. Through the years the sport has seen three distinct types of baskets evolve, each identified more by the type of burner support than by other features of the basket.

The Flexible or Floating Burner
If Jacques Charles’ design was good enough for gas balloons it could be good enough for hot air. In fact the early hot air balloons almost universally featured "floating burners." The term ‘floating burners’ simply means that in lieu of the load ring used by gas balloonists to attach their envelope and baskets together, hot air balloonists installed the burner frame or "plate" as it was often called then. This plate served, like the load ring, as a convenient midpoint to which both the envelope and basket could be attached. The basket usually being slung by ropes or cables. The burner plate or frame also, like the load ring, serves to distribute the basket’s load evenly to the envelope.

While functional, this design did have one perilous flaw. Upon a heavy landing the ropes or cables between the basket and the burner frame go slack for a few moments until the balloon rebounds and snaps these line taut again. These slack suspension lines can tangle with hand and feet and cause injury when jerked taut.

The force of a rebounding hot air balloon is much greater than that of a gas balloon because of its greater mass relative to the basket and payload. Thus, on a hard landing, the "floating" burner will also descend into the basket where it can cause severe head injuries.

The Rigid Basket
Recognizing the inherent danger in the floating burner design, engineers at Raven Industries set about to design a system that would incorporate a better support for the burner and thus increased safety for the passengers. The result is what many older balloonists remember fondly as "the bucket."

"We started out using just a square wicker basket, much like the British, " says Larry Manderscheid of Aerostar (formerly Raven) Balloons. "But it wasn’t long before we recognized the danger of the floating burner and felt that some sort of burner support was necessary."

The result was a basket built around a plywood floor with aluminum and steel tubing forming the framework and fiberglass panels enclosing the sides. This design featured rigid tubular supports between the basket and burner frame to hold the burner in place. Now when the balloon was landed hard, the cables between the envelope and the burner frame would go slack, but the burner stayed put!

Raven’s aluminum basket was introduced in 1974 but would last only about two years on the market (although the occasional "bucket" still can be found flying today). While the rigid uprights solved the problem of the floating burner, it soon became apparent that aluminum and fiberglass was just not suited to the task. Too often the same aforementioned hard landings would result in the tubular frame of the basket bending or the fiberglass sides being shattered.

"So in 1976," says Mandershied, "we returned to the traditional wicker basket, introducing the system around which all of our other baskets have been modeled, the Classic Limited." However, Raven officials were convinced of the value of the rigid uprights and tubular steel uprights have remained standard on Raven (now Aerostar) baskets ever since.

The Classic Limited might rightly be called the first basket to introduce an element of style as well as function to ballooning. Its sides were flared, an entry step was provided, and it even had "windows." These were portholes really on each side that featured an opening in the weave of the wicker where the passenger, if seated, could look out.

Seeing Raven’s work, and having experimented with his own tubing and canvas sided baskets, Tracy Barnes would introduce the most revolutionary basket in ballooning’s history. His triangular carriage relied on wicker for its traditional values of strength and resilience while also featuring rigid uprights, only fashioned of rattan. "I never did like the idea of something heavy floating above my head," Barnes explained of his desire for rigid uprights. (See The Triangular Carriage )

This basket style utilizes nylon rods to support the burner above the basket while steel cables still create a sling around the basket and carry the load. This system provides the advantages of both systems; economical construction, ease of transport since the uprights are "broken down" in transit, while protecting the passengers from falling burners. Plus, the on impact with the ground, or if torqued while landing or on tether, the rods will bend but seldom break, returning to their original position as the torque is released. As an added feature the nylon rods can be removed by necessity (for example, in the case of a broken rod which on a rigid system would ground the balloon until the uprights could be repaired) or by choice, to create the old floating burner set-up still preferred by some competition pilots.

Experimentation
Even though the traditional wicker basket has best served ballooning through the ages, there have been a variety of notable exceptions, employed for a variety of reasons. In 1845 an obscure French aeronaut, Guillot, is credited with making the first ascent hanging from a trapeze suspended beneath a Montgolfier. In the mid 1850’s Monsieur and Madame Poitevin suspended live animals beneath their balloons, usually a horse or bull, and rode into the skies in their "cavalcade of the air." (Imagine trying that today with the current FARs!)

In more modern times, when the race was on to cross the world’s oceans by balloon, balloonists were faced with building "baskets" that could also serve as boats, seaworthy enough to last until rescue if necessary. When Per Lindstrand and Richard Branson went ballooning in the jet stream to cross the Atlantic and Pacific they opted for a pressurized capsule, rather than a basket, for obvious reasons.

	Today's Baskets On this page are some examples of sport balloon baskets today. Pictured top left and right are some examples of custom colors that can be woven into a basket and leather trim that can be ordered. Top left is the Balloon Works vertical weave. Top right is an example of both custom weave coloring and leather trim from Thunder & Colt US. Pictured below are six sport baskets from some of the balloon manufacturers. Clockwise from the top left is Aerostar Classic II, Cameron Balloons, Head Balloons, The Balloon Works, Lindstrand Balloons, and Thunder & Colt.

Record flights have always provided a fertile field for experimentation. When Dr. Bill Bussey attempted his first records in an AX-5 and later an AX-6 balloon, he wanted a basket that was strong yet lightweight-the ultimate dream of every aeronaut. His team turned to the state-of-the art materials Kevlar and carbon fiber. Using a cardboard shipping carton from a standard Balloon Works basket as a mold, a triangular Kevlar/carbon basket was fashioned. It weighed only 80 pounds, less than wicker, was extremely strong, but landed like an ice cube. "It was so slick," says Bussey, "there was no way to stop it on a drag landing."

Earlier this year (February), for his latest record flight (which coincidentally broke some of his earlier records) Bussey and his team set out to fashion an ultra-light basket. Using corrugated Kevlar as a floor, aluminum tubing for a frame, pipe insulation (right off the shelf of the local hardware store) and shrink wrap, they built a tiny one man basket weighing in at only 24 pounds. Bussey spent almost 12 hours and flew almost 900 miles at altitudes nearing 18,000 feet in this fragile cockpit!

The Modern Basket
So, after more than 200 years of development the modern day hot air balloon basket has changed very little since the 1800. Today the typical basket is made of rattan, willow and cane. Usually the reeds are woven around a plywood (multi-ply, marine grade) floor although a hallmark of Cameron Balloons through the years has been their all woven (including the floor) baskets. In some models, a stainless steel frame supported by rattan "broomsticks" is attached to the floor to form a framework for the remaining weave.

Stainless steel cable or ropes pass down one side of the basket inside the weave, across (underneath) the basket floor and up the other side forming a sling around the entire compartment. Thus these cables actually carry the balloon’s payload, relying very little on the strength of the wicker work.

Most standard sport baskets today are approximately 3 feet by 4 feet and 3 1/2 feet deep. (All manufacturers offer a variety of sizes from slightly smaller to much, much larger.) Added to the floor on the basket’s bottom are hardwood skids. Interwoven with the wicker are usually interior rope handles along the upper portion of the basket (for passenger hand-holds) and exterior handles along the lower portion for ease in transporting the basket. Side rails are formed by weaving the rattan ends into a rim which is then foam padded and covered with fabric, suede or smooth leather. Rawhide is also typically added where the floor and basket sides are formed to provide a smooth rounded edge.

Still, improvement and innovation are never far from any balloonist’s mind. Recently, Head Balloons replaced the standard rattan studs in their basket framework with nylon rods (the same as those used on flexi-rigid uprights) claiming greater strength, improved flexibility and longer life, thus less expensive long-term repairs. With any eye toward economy and lighter weight, Lindstrand Balloons USA just introduced a new basket that is in reality a modern throwback to the baskets of yesterday. It features all the standard Lindstrand qualities and amenities, but adds an open air weave that gives the impression of windows looking for all the world like a gas balloon basket from yesteryear-in other words, old world craftsmanship coupled with today’s safety and comfort features.

In short, today’s wicker basket employs not only the old-fashioned craftsmanship of ballooning’s beginnings, but more importantly it is lightweight, strong, durable and resilient-making it the perfect cockpit from which to enjoy a lighter-than-air flight while functioning as a necessary shock absorber during some of those less-than-perfect landings.