Several years ago, sixteen balloonists took part in a record attempt to drop skydivers out of balloons. We decided to take off from Los Lunas, New Mexico in mid- February. The first morning was rained out. The next morning we were all hyped and ready to go. We’re gonna do it this time! we said to ourselves. We were all furnished with radios and were supposed to climb at 600 fpm and stay together so the jumpers could do a freefall pattern. There was no launch control and nobody watched the weather.
We all launched and began a 600 fpm ascent to 15,000 ft. I was flying an Aerostar 7 with two jumpers and all their gear. The weather was warmer than usual for February. I tried to keep up with the ascent but became worried when the pyro showed 275 and I began to fall behind the lead balloon. At 300 I got on the radio and said that I couldn’t keep up. There were lots of “me-toos”. If the jumpers are to make a pattern, we would have to stay together. We all slowed to 400 fpm.
We decided to drop the jumpers at 12,000 ft MSL (about 7,000 ft AGL). They went off without a hitch on command and we watched as they assembled into a pattern below us. Record set!! Twenty-five jumpers free falling from 12 balloons.
Now, back to flying the balloon. I noticed we were heading East over the Monzano mountains at about 50 mph. There were thunderstorms covering the mountain tops. We’d been too intent on staying together and on getting the jumpers out to have noticed the weather.
Flying solo now, my only thought was to get down. Venting for 5 minutes didn’t have much effect. Three hundred feet per minute (300 fpm) down was about it. The mountains were looming ahead and there was no way to get down before going over. Now what?
I decided to get on the burner and ride it out. I climbed to 15,300 ft. to get over the thunderstorms. The next few minutes is almost a blur. I remember seeing other balloons almost streamering and then pushed down into mushroom shapes. At times I could see the sky straight above me; at other times the envelope was pushed so far down I could not see out. Got over the mountains quickly and began a descent.....anywhere, I didn’t care. That was when I truly learned about rotors. The rotor sucked me into it. The vario went crazy. It pegged out the 600 ft. scale and then the 1500 ft. scale, even though my temp was well above equilibrium. At one point I saw a foot of slack in the load cables. I was being driven down at a speed the book says cannot happen. What to do? Get on the burner, I thought.
I watched the temp climb to 250 then 300 then 340, still going down with the vario pegged and powerlines just where I hoped to land. What to do?
I began to feel the balloon.....settle...for lack of a better word. Load cables stretched out like they should and things began to feel right. The descent slowed, I vented all that excess heat, and I thought I was about to make a landing....wrong!! Other side of the rotor. Back toward the mountains and up to about 8,000 ft, I went.
Now I’m setting way off the ground and not really wanting to go back down but I sure don’t want to be up here. What to do? Get back on the burner. I climbed out of the rotor, flew a few miles past it, and descended at a high rate of speed. This time I landed in a field with no injuries to myself and no damage to the balloon.
Meanwhile one of my former students took an almost brand new balloon through this same adventure. He was coming in for a high wind landing and noticed a soft fresh pile of dirt about 30 ft. high. He figured he would hit it about half way up and drag over the top to a smooth landing.
What he didn’t realize was that every pile of dirt must come out of a hole somewhere. He had discovered the city dump for the town of Mountainair! Also he didn’t realize that dragging a basket up the side of a pile of dirt acts like a shovel and quickly fills it with dirt. Anyway, after reaching the top of the pile with dirt knee-deep in the basket, and losing buoyancy fast, he found out where the dirt had come from. About 50 ft. below him was the pit for the city dump with a bulldozer sitting in the middle. He bounced off the bulldozer and ripped out in the middle of the city dump. On his advice we checked his top....not only were the temp tabs black, the pockets the temp tabs were in were also melted. Sometime during the flight his burner flame had touched the top.....
We made the mistake of being too focused on what we were doing to notice the weather around us. Thankfully, there were no injuries and no serious damage was done to the twelve balloons that flew over the thunderstorms. I’m glad to have lived through the experience but never want to do it again. It was the third and last of the annual Sunset Grille parachute drops.