"Speak softly and tenderly today, for tomorrow you may have to eat your words."

It was a sunrise launch just south of Plano, Texas. A pibal released 15 minutes before liftoff indicated a flight path to the west of a 300 foot radio tower. However, the wind had shifted about 10-12 degrees to the right and I was now heading toward the tower. There were absolutely no landing sites available before reaching the tower.

About 50 minutes before sunrise a call to Flight Service for a pre-flight briefing showed surface winds to be 180 at 7 knots, temperature 68¡F and dew point 62¡F. The ceiling was reported to be scattered at 4,000 feet, visibility was 10 miles and there were no flight precautions. The winds aloft forecast indicated 180 at 15 knots at 3,000 feet and 190 at 20 knots at 6,000 feet.

Immediately after lifting off I and my two passengers had clear vision in all directions including up, where we could see clear blue sky. but as we climbed to clear the tower, fog began forming around us. After clearing the radio tower my flight path would take me over 2 sets of hummers within a mile or two and another set about 11 miles north. The fog closing in on me seemed very light and wispy. Not having a place to land before the tower I thought I'd climb out the top and wait for it to burn off. As I cleared the flashing red light on the top of the tower I could no longer see the ground, but still had clear blue sky above.

Thinking of the powerlines in front of me I continued to ascend but the higher I went the more the horizontal visibility decreased. Soon I had no visibility in any direction except up which was still blue. I cleared the "fog" at about 3,500 feet AGL with the sun shining brightly above the clouds. My passengers got some great photos of the shadow of the balloon on the tops of the clouds. I quickly lost radio contact with the chase vehicle and, with no ground reference available, I had no idea where we were.

My passengers were a USAF Colonel and his wife. As we talked I learned that he was the chief instructor and designated military examiner for helicopters based at Carswell Air Force Base in Ft. Worth. He looked down at my instrument panel and said,

"That is the altimeter, that is a variometer, but what is this instrument?" After I explained the purpose of the pyrometer he said, "What do we do now?" I explained my plan of action and he, seeing no real alternative, agreed that it was probably our only good plan under the circumstances.

I flew a full 1,000 feet above the clouds until I used 90% of tanks 1 and 2. Shifting to my third tank I began a tightly controlled descent. Descending through the clouds I maintained a 400 fpm descent until the altimeter indicated 700 ft AGL. This was a totally new experience for me. I have read about fixed wing pilots getting caught in the clouds and, having no ground reference they begin to question their instruments.

Well, I was never in doubt since the basket can hang in only one direction, DOWN.

Conversation inside the cloud was like standing inside a small closet. All sound reverberated and reflected back into the basket giving us a very eerie feeling. At 700 ft AGL I slowed the descent to about 50 fpm until about 300 feet AGL and then slowed again to about 20 fpm.

I instructed the Colonel to look down for any indication of the ground and I looked forward, or what I thought was forward, for any obstacle. Since I could see nothing but cloud I really didn't have any way of telling which way we were traveling. My last ground reference indicated that I had been flying directly north so I got out my compass and used north as my best reference for direction. The compass gave me a feeling that I was doing everything I could under the circumstances. At about 60 feet he yelled "GRASS" and I quickly vented to get the basket low enough so I could see forward.

The angel on my shoulder came through for me once again. We were at the beginning of a huge pasture, moving at about 25 mph toward a house a half mile directly in front of us. There was no fence around the house so I gently skimmed in, dragged across the grass toward the house and vented hard just before I reached the back yard. The envelope settled into the yard with the basket still in the pasture.

An elderly man waiting on the porch for his wife to get ready for church this fine Sunday morning saw us coming toward him. He walked toward us as we settled down into his yard. "Where are we?" I asked. When he told me I was astonished at the distance we had traveled. We had flown about 60 miles in 55 minutes, descended through the clouds and ended up in the back yard of the most friendly landowner I have ever met. He let us use the phone to call our lost balloon number long distance, and after packing up the envelope we waited in his home for the return call from the crew. His wife had not yet come down for church so he called up to her.

"Martha, just put on your apron, we have guests for breakfast."

They served us a breakfast fit for a king and then did it all over again when the crew arrived over an hour later.

The home had been designated as an historical site by the State of Texas and he took great pride in giving us a grand tour. When the crew arrived they too feasted on home made biscuits and gravy, eggs, bacon and juice. A second tour of the home for the crew was in order before we could leave. His last comment as we were driving away was, "Drop in any time!"

On the way back to Plano the Colonel and I rehashed the whole flight. He commented, "Faced with some unusual circumstances you took the best action available." I replied, "My angel was there when I needed him and your second pair of eyes and experience in instrument flying helped a lot." Being able to bounce my plan off another aviation type who had an instrument rating in fixed and rotary wing was very valuable. I, having never experienced flying in IFR conditions, and he having IFR ratings but never having been in a balloon before, came up with a plan that got us safely back on the ground. That was the day I decided that I would never use that launch site again, and I never have....

About two weeks later I received a phone call from the Colonel. He invited me to Carswell AFB for a helicopter ride. Well, we took off and climbed to about 3,000 ft AGL where he proceeded to turn off the engine. We did a dead stick landing (auto rotation) into a large open field near the base. Softly touching down he looked over at me hoping to see fear in my eyes. He was very disappointed when he saw the big smile on my face. I thought it was great fun and asked to do it again and again. I may be a little crazy, but I knew he wouldn't hurt himself and to me it was better than Six Flags Over Texas. He said, "You scared the _ _ _ _ out of me and I just wanted a chance to get even." He ended up giving me about an hour of instruction in helicopter but he wouldn't let me do an auto rotation landing.

Ed note: A cooler wind must have come in at high speed, closing the spread between temperature and dew point, creating the fog.