Tranquil Voyager: Aspen to Altoona

On the first weekend in October Ed Heltshe and I flew Ed’s Cameron R-77 Roziere balloon more than 1500 miles from Aspen, Colorado to Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Most Roziere flights are made to win races, set records or promote products or companies. We made this flight for the beauty and the adventure of it, and to learn better how to fly these long-duration, long-distance Roziere balloons. There were no sponsors. There was no press. This is probably the only long-distance Roziere flight ever made purely for sport.

A Roziere is a gas balloon at the top and a hot air balloon at the bottom. By volume, Ed’s is about two thirds gas and one third hot-well, warm-air. Most of the lift is from the helium, with a little extra lift gained when necessary by heating the air and helium just a bit. This eliminates the need for ballast and allows a flight to last up to weeks instead of days.

For me, the story of our flight began last spring when Ed bought Steve Fossett’s Cameron R-77 Atlantic envelope and started talking to me about a long-distance flight across the United States. Would I put this flight together and accompany Ed on it? Wow! Sure! I can do that! I’ve planned and made complex flights before.

What I still forget at the beginning of projects like this is how much work it takes to get from idea to reality. As a result I end up doing a lot more work than I expected, but I live adventures people with more foresight than me miss.

Ed inadvertently put more pressure on me by naming the flight "Tranquil Voyager", a name I hoped would end up having been appropriate.

Over the summer, Ed and I assembled a complete balloon system for our flight. Unlike the Cameron trans-oceanic balloons, which use a very expensive, carbon-Kevlar fiber reinforced composite capsule, we used an inexpensive, large, partitioned, woven basket. Water landings are not a concern flying over the U.S., and we wanted to have the 360-degree view we are used to. A shiny new Cameron Roziere double burner and assorted new and used hot air balloon fuel tanks completed our basic balloon.

Between us, Ed and I found enough avionics equipment to assemble two of everything important except radar transponder, of which we had only one. We needed a lot of electricity to run all this stuff, so we also bought Steve Fossett’s Atlantic generator. In my almost daily phone conversations before the flight with my friend Tim Cole, he kept telling me the noise and the hassle of keeping this generator running in flight would drive us crazy. He should know-he and Steve ran this generator about 60 of the 75 hours of their Atlantic flight. Finally, we decided to take four large deep- discharge boat batteries. This was a good decision.

Long distance balloon flights typically happen at high enough altitude to require breathing oxygen, so we also bought one of Steve’s liquid oxygen tanks. Combined with super-efficient nasal cannulae designed by the Marquis de Sade, this would provide us with enough oxygen for about four days at 15,000 feet.

The alumni office folks at Stevens State Tech, a school Ed had attended in Pennsylvania, helped arrange shipping to Aspen of the three-quarters of a ton of equipment, and space for us to work on it while there.

In late-September Ed, crew volunteer Kelly Neill (son of long-time hot air competitor Jim Neill), and I headed west to Aspen. While there preparing the equipment for flight, we were subsequently joined by Ed’s daughter Megan, my daughter Courtney, and world-travelling balloonist Norah Ormerod.

Aspen is a beautiful place. During regular hikes amidst the overwhelming mountainscape, Ed and I each occasionally drifted off into thought about actually flying over those forbidding peaks. Earlier, I had begun circling in red in my DeLorme Atlas all the 12,000 foot peaks around Aspen, but quit as I approached 40 of them. What a sight this would be from our basket in the morning light! Little did we then know what time of day we would actually be crossing these peaks.

Ralph Lewis, hot air balloonist and meteorologist, had agreed to consult on weather for our flight. He and I learned a lot from each other in long phone conversations in the days before the launch. Finally we saw a north-south pressure ridge approaching and, remembering the advice of Donald Cameron on trans-oceanic ballooning weather, decided Ed and I would lift off into the ridge and ride it across the U.S.

This, however, meant an evening lift-off and night crossing of the most rugged mountains in North America. This seemed OK to me. I didn’t know any better-I had never flown over mountains.

On Friday, October 6, gas ballooning experts and friends Tim Cole and Dennis Brown inflated the balloon on the softball diamond in Snowmass Village, Colorado, while Ed, Norah and I were buying ten times as many groceries as we could possibly use on the flight. Nick Saum arrived in his plane in the early afternoon and set off immediately to replace the transponder antenna that had broken on its way to the launch field. Without this, the flight would not have been possible.

When all was ready, Nick weighed us off and launched us just before sunset. Within an hour after launch we had dropped all our ballast in order to climb high enough to safely clear the darkening mountain peaks. This was not delicate ballooning. We poured out full bags at a time, creating great vertical sand clouds above Snowmass Village.

Over the following hour we also ballasted 100 pounds of unburned propane, and subsequently chucked the empty tank into the full-moon-silvered dimness of some unknown, uninhabited, rugged peak. Long pause. Whump!

Ed and I complemented each other well in those early hours. Ed has flown over mountains many times, but had never flown in a gas balloon. I had never flown over mountains, but have been flying in gas balloons for several decades. For several hours, the many 14,000-plus foot peaks passed silently below and around us at more than 30 knots. Finally, the lights of Denver appeared and gradually brightened and the mountains receded silently behind us.

Dawn is very special on a long balloon flight. First traces of morning light give hope of warmth and sunshine. The eastern sky brightens at an ever-increasing rate and with ever-increasing color, all fast enough so you can’t quite keep up with it. Just as the light show ends, the sun’s radiant warmth begins to purge the bone-chilling cold of night at altitude. At that first dawn, I was reminded of what my friend David Schaffer said after he first flew a hot air balloon at night: "Flying at night makes you appreciate flying during the day."

We flew straight east across Kansas on Saturday. Ed kept wondering where all the people were. I kept talking about how wonderful the Great Plains are for ammonia ballooning. Ignoring our treasure trove of healthful groceries, we ate mostly junk food, but we did drink the gallon per day of fluids our bodies needed at those high altitudes.

Late Saturday afternoon we dipped low to ballast 125 pounds of expendable equipment west of Kansas City, and flew into our second sunset and first big populated area and busy airspace of the flight.

After creeping just north of the Kansas City Class B Airspace (old TCA), we made an unexpected turn to the south. We did not want this turn and we could not explain it. The GPS track readout gradually increased from 090 degrees, ultimately reaching 125 degrees.

By the early morning hours, with Ed sleeping in his seat, I was beginning to nod off, occasionally awakening with a start, the instruments dancing blurred before me. The altitude alarms would have awakened us if we had gained or lost much altitude, but the experience was nonetheless startling. I had gone from Friday morning to early Sunday morning without sleep.

Ed took over flying. I crawled onto the floor of the co-pilot side of our partitioned basket and slept for several hours, got up, looked around, and slept for several more hours. I slept most of the way across Missouri, and when I finally awoke again, shivering, the lights of St. Louis sprawled before us in the pre-dawn sky.

Another rejuvenating sunrise northeast of St. Louis started our last day of completely tranquil flight. Central Illinois is like a Kansas with people-large, flat farms and small, flat towns, but with people. For a long time we overheard on our business band radio the cheerful chatter of working farmers driving combines, fixing broken equipment, loading and unloading trucks of freshly harvested crop. We listened more closely when the conversation turned to lengthy speculation about that white balloon way up in the sky. Ed finally picked up the radio and in a friendly voice announced with his usual directness: "This is the balloon. What do you want to know?".

By late afternoon Saturday, we were popping popcorn on one of our pilot lights over the empty Indianapolis Speedway, cautiously watching the big commercial airport not far to our south. Just to the east of the Speedway we heard on the radio the voice of someone who was obviously flying a balloon. Not knowing who it was, I announced who we were and what we were doing, and a rather surprised hot air balloonist replied from his balloon far below.

The sun set again as we entered Ohio. We flew right over the Wright Patterson air field and Dayton in mid-evening at about 12,000 feet. A while later we flew directly over the Columbus Class C Airspace (old ARSA). From Dayton onward across Ohio we monitored the appropriate air traffic control frequencies and got to hear a lot of airliner traffic operating in those areas.

Our transponder and mode C altitude encoder had been operating for the entire flight, but I talked with Columbus Approach Control to assure that we were visible on the air traffic control radar. I didn’t like flying at night where the airliners fly.

During the course of the flight it became clearer and clearer to Ed and I that our real goal was "home". This meant Pennsylvania, or central Pennsylvania, or, if we were really lucky or really good, Lancaster, or, gosh, the biggest dream of all, Ed’s farm south of Lancaster.

With so much built-up area below us at sunset on Sunday we decided not to ballasting anything. This meant we were as much as 200 pounds heavier than we needed to be Sunday night. This caused us to burn much more fuel Sunday night than otherwise necessary, but even so probably kept open the option of flying until Tuesday morning.

As we entered western Pennsylvania late Sunday evening, I fired up the autopilot I built for Steve Fossett for his trans-global flight this winter. Ed took over watching the "Vegematic II" fly the balloon at 12,807 feet, and I collapsed again on the floor for several hours sleep.

When I awoke at first light, the balloon was still flying exactly level at 12,807 feet. The barograph trace of the preceding six hours is a straight, horizontal line-quite impressive. I hope the autopilot does as well for Steve on his flight.

More impressive, however, were the Allegheny Mountains stretching eastward towards the sunrise. These Mountains are long, forested ridges separated by narrow valleys sprinkled with farms. Well, we think they were sprinkled with farms. The fog in the valleys prevented us from seeing anything except the forested slopes and a few fragments of field here and there between fog and forest.

After a short conversation, we decided to see if we could find more right up higher. A quick trip up to 15,500 feet revealed more and more left above. We confirmed to each other that we weren’t trying to set records or win anything and that a good landing in the mountains of central Pennsylvania a short drive from Ed’s farm would be a good ending to a classy flight.

Now, neither Ed nor I had ever landed a Roziere balloon. The Cameron R-77 flight manual suggests valving helium "extravagantly". Since even flying a large helium-filled balloon in the first place is extravagant, we didn’t have any problem with this.

We did have to valve a lot to get down from 15,500 feet, since the solar heating of the new day was kicking in especially strongly with all the sunlight reflecting off the fog below and to our east. As we finally got low over the fog in what turned out to be named, appropriately, Sinking Valley, we drifted just beyond the edge of the fog at the base of the mountain slope. We missed landing on the golf course and drifted back over the woods at about 6 knots.

Ed manned the trail ropes and I operated the burners and gas valve. To stop going up or start down I would valve off helium. To stop going down or start going up, I would heat. This seemed destined to be a short term way to fly.

We both realized that the warming slope would soon probably draw us towards it and up the unlandable ridge. When a two-track dirt road through the woods approached, I asked Ed to drop first one, then the other trail rope into the trees, and we settled gracefully onto the narrow dirt road.

We landed several hours after sunrise Monday morning more than 1500 miles from our take off site in Colorado. That we were able to fly almost to Ed’s farm made the retrieve simple, and we slept at Ed’s that night.

It took most of the day to deflate and pack the balloon and equipment, and the landowner invited us in for dinner. The Amish farmer next door stopped by for a while to talk, and plenty of interesting people eventually appeared and helped us.

The story of this flight has many facets. Largely it was a celebration of friendship among the dozen people who made it happen.

Tim Cole and Dennis Brown inflated the balloon. Nick Saum solved the transponder antenna problem and launched us. Having two Montgolfier Diploma recipients and the current World Roziere Balloon Champion put us up was a reassuring luxury.

Terryl Lofgren orchestrated the helium and got it there on short notice for our unexpected evening launch. Norah Ormerod did anything we needed. Kelly Neill single- handedly chased some 2,400 miles, and provided our main communication link, on what is one of the longest distance balloon chases ever.

Ralph Lewis got us all the weather information we could use and acted as a sounding board for our weather thoughts. Bill and Marilyn Ortman provided warehouse space for us to use in Aspen and entertained us and all the people we dragged along uninvited to dinner at their home.

Fred Gorrell, of transcontinental balloon flight fame himself, arranged the use of the launch field and offered us his propane source and anything else we needed. John Bagwell braved the cold wind on short notice to fill our propane tanks, and later helped with the inflation. Megan Heltshe, Courtney Comstock, and Lynn Novitsky encouraged and entertained us. And John Kugler, who had really got me going as a gas balloon pilot several years ago in his ammonia balloon, cheered us on from afar as he prepared to compete in the Gordon Bennett qualifying race.

Others who made this flight possible are Tucker Comstock and all the other folks at Cameron Balloons U S, who were themselves busy getting ready for and attending the Albuquerque Fiesta, but who cheerfully tolerated and assisted our equipment preparation at the Cameron Balloons U S plant. Finally, every Roziere flight is possible only because Donald Cameron several decades ago realized this is the only way to make extraordinarily long balloon flights, and over the years since through Cameron Balloons Ltd. doggedly developed a full line of rugged and reliable Roziere balloons.

Long distance flights have always fascinated me, so for me this was the flight of a lifetime. Unlike many long distance balloon flights, we enjoyed perfect weather from beginning to end. Only traces of high cirrus cloud appeared now and then. The surface wind never blew more than a comfortable landing speed. We always tracked almost straight to the east. The flight lived up to its name.

But also, the uninterrupted 1500-mile swath of the United States which was our road revealed the vast beauty of this country, beginning with the most rugged mountains in North America lit by the full moon, through endless miles of Midwest food bowl, to worn, but still-imposing eastern mountains. And there were in the end, due to difficulties in staying in touch with Ralph, the unexpected challenge and satisfaction of having made the flight without the professional meteorological guidance enroute which is usual for flights like this.

During our flight we heard news of the Gordon Bennett qualifying race from Albuquerque, which had begun a day later than we had launched. Some of the balloons in this race crossed where we had been a day before. That several of these balloons flew almost as far as we did is remarkable. The balloon we were flying had a maximum duration of about five days despite the high initial ceiling necessary to overfly the mountains at the start. In fact, the longest duration balloon flight ever had been in a Cameron R-77 like ours.

Even before we made this flight, Ed was talking about our next Roziere flight. Right now-after months of full-time preparation and more than three weeks on the road-I keep telling him to ask me later. It takes a long time to plan and prepare for a flight like this. The flight itself is so intense an experience that it takes a long time to savor it.

But unlike my reaction as a child to once having eaten an entire ginger bread house in a single sitting, I’m sure I’ll soon be anxious to start planning the next major balloon adventure.

Besides, now that Ed and I now know how to fly these big Rozieres, we can start planning a really long flight.