The recommendation that won the day called for transforming Helen, Georgia, tucked away in the mountains of Georgia, into a small Bavarian village like those found on so many picture postcards sent home from Europe. Townspeople used their own funds to build new facades replicating the "black & white" architecture so predominant in the Bavarian Alps and over time created a unique new tourist attraction identity for their hometown of Helen.
One such citizen was a man named Pete Hodgkinson. While examining a book on Bavarian architecture in 1973, he noticed a picture of a balloon flying over the Alps and decided that if balloons could fly over the Bavarian Alps they could just as easily transverse the Georgian "Alps". Much telephone research led to Don Piccard who directed Hodkinson, partner Lanier Chambers and friend Tarpley Head to one Bill Meadows, then a Piccard dealer in Statesville, North Carolina. A short drive later and Helen, Georgia had its own balloon, and soon would have its first balloon pilot.
"We never got any formal training," recalls Tarp Head, President and CEO of Head Balloons. "We just went out and learned to inflate the thing, and of course, we damaged it, as that will happen... so I taught myself to sew in order to repair the balloon.
"We used the balloon as a tourist attraction and I tethered it for years back when you didn't need a license to tether balloons. We'd get a crowd up, tether the balloon for a while then Pete would get in and fly away while I got in the car and chased him."
Both Hodgkinson and Chambers eventually got a student license while Head admits to flying for quite some time without one. Eventually the FAA landed on Helen's star attraction and it was Head who was elected to get the real pilot's license.
"That was in 1975," says Head, "and I had just met and begun running around with Mike Adams down in Atlanta where I was attending Georgia Tech."
Indeed it was Adams who would sign-off Head's application for a pilot certificate.
The two had met a year earlier, in 1974, when Helen hosted the first of its now annual Helen-to-the-Atlantic balloon races.
The pair's friendship soon extended into a business venture as Head joined Mike Adams at Adam's Balloon Loft. Head would remain a partner in the business until 1979 when the pair split. Adams bought out Head's interest in the company.
His next step was the one so many balloonists, even today, yearn for. Head became a road warrior pilot, flying commercially for Coca-Cola and a variety of other clients. After three years on the road, he tired of the hotel and suitcase lifestyle. One of the reasons Head had split from Adams was that he had ideas of his own about how to build and design balloon systems.
Searching for something new to do, Head filed for his FAA certification in 1983 and received the first Type Certificate for Head Balloons in 1984.
More than a decade later Head Balloons is the most successful of the small, 'one-of' balloon builders in the world. While he cannot, and does not want to compete against the likes of Aerostar, Cameron or The Balloon Works, Head Balloons is nevertheless rapidly expanding worldwide with certification won and a dealer now in Germany, and similar steps underway in Argentina, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and China.
Head is also unique in the sport as he was the first to gain FAA approval, through a Supplemental Type Certificate, to mix and match major components (envelopes over baskets and burners) to create a new aircraft. Ironically the first of these was the Head envelope, an AX8-88, this reporter now flies over a T&C basket & burners which Head originally STC'd over a TBW basket in 1985.
"That move put us out in the marketplace much sooner than if we had stuck to selling full systems," Head explains, "because it made it much more attractive to people to buy one of our envelopes and get introduced to our equipment. There's no question the replacement envelope product allowed us to grow much quicker than we would have otherwise."
And just who does Head Balloons see as its typical customer? "I think when we sell a balloon," says Head, "it is to those people who really get out and shop the market to see and compare exactly what they're getting for their dollar.
"We run a small shop, it's not very big. It's paid for. We don't have a huge building but everything we do here is custom. I don't stockpile a lot of inventory so my overhead is very low. As a result we don't have a huge production line to shut down when a customer comes in and wants something done a little different. I think it's our ability to serve the customer who wants a custom product, or maybe a one-of design or accessory that has made us successful."
As for the future, Head says manufacturing has to be his main focus, "to keep the customers happy.
"I've always said the reason I enjoy ballooning so much is because it has afforded me the opportunity to travel and meet so many new people. With all the expansion we have going on it's keeping me on the road as much as I need to be and sending me to places I might never of dreamed of seeing. That's going to keep me busy here for the next several years..."
Career Highlights: