J Renée

An Interview with Kevin Uliassi

As children we have dreams and aspirations that often become lost as life pulls us in many different directions. Kevin Uliassi was fascinated by airships as a child. The story of Ed Yost's Atlantic attempt in 1976 and the successful crossing by Double Eagle II in 1978 captivated him. These exploits were the catalyst to his thinking of long distance balloon flight, and the ultimate distance flight of allaround-the-world in a balloon.

The first step started with earning his balloon rating on his 19 birthday. A chance call from John Petrehn to crew for him at a local rally jump started Kevin's plans. While talking shop on the balloon field, Petrehn never knew of Kevin's hopes, Kevin told him that he thought the flight could be done in the northern hemisphere, solo, low level, in a unpressurized gondola. Petrehn, who was working on southern hemisphere, pressurized project, off-hand challenged him to go out and prove it. July 4, 1986 forever changed Kevin's life.

While the rest is not history yet, it has consumed most the last 12 years of Kevin's life. One of his early tasks was to petition the Fédération Aéronautic Internationale in 1986 to establish guidelines for an around-the-world record. The response he received was that a flight of this type was a work of literature, pure fiction. Besides they only sanctioned distance, duration and altitude. Times have changed.

He worked actively sending out more than 700 proposals. He keep knocking on doors, some of them more than once. Finally a few doors opened including his alma mater, Illinois Institute of Technology.

After his unsuccessful attempt, Balloon Life talked at length with Kevin about his dream. Following is part of that conversation.

Balloon Life: When did the project start coming together?

Kevin Uliassi: In December of 1996 we bought a computer to work on the project. I turned to Renée and said, "If I don't do it this year I won't be able to live with myself and you won't want to live me." At that point I still thought it only a dream.

February 14, last year I went to the Cameron factory. It was a fact finding mission to find out what it would really cost for an envelope, maybe a burner and a capsule. I was thinking through all the options. I spent four days there talking with Don Cameron.

I came away convinced that I wouldn't be able to afford anything they built. I can't remember the actual chain of events but I probably ordered my autopilot in March or April. I called Bruce Comstock and asked if he would consider building a set of autopilots for me. That was all I could afford at the time and I knew that I needed it.

I took a leave of absence from my architectural job in March. I started working on it full-time trying to get sponsors and raise money. Nobody was really interested. When it came time to start ordering parts, Renée and I had savings. One of the first things we did was order the capsule. I had been working on the capsule design for a long time. I guess it was August when I told [Ron Jones] to build it.

We ordered the envelope fairly late maybe July or August. July probably. Did that by getting a bank loan with my old bank back in Chicago.

Sponsors did start coming on line. Energizer agreed to supply all the batteries, AmeriFIT, the guy who coats the fabric became a sponsor by supplying the all coating service free of charge. All the sponsors are small but it adds up. We are talking $125,000-135,000. Then at the very last minute, two weeks before the launch PageNet came on as a sponsor. So we could pay for the [helium]. I was literally standing in Illinois realizing that I could finance it on 30 days net but if I was an honest person I didn't have the money to pay for it.

BL: You had your capsule built in the Fife, Washington. How did you come to choose this manufacturer?

KU: I contacted a number of boat builders. The capsule is basically carbon fiber, nylon technology. I talked with some boat builders in Arizona and Illinois. One name that keep coming back to me was Ron Jones. They build an outstanding product.

The heaviest part of the capsule was the foam insulation. The whole capsule only weights about 300 pounds.

BL: Why did you choose the Chicago for launch?

KU: This was a point for Bob [Rice] and me. Chicago gave me advantages logistically. First of all is it acceptable for inserting a balloon into the jet stream. Most of the people I knew that could help lived there. The other reason is that things are cheap in Chicago and you can get anything. Helium is cheaper there. We stayed with relatives. We are talking about a really small budget.

I was committed to Chicago and had no place to launch. Bill O'Donald (Rockford, IL) came along and said there is a quarry up here why don't you take a look at it. Those guys, Rockford Mine Co, could not have been better. There couldn't have been a better place in the country. The facility was wonderful. First, because it blocked the surface wind. Second, anytime you needed a front end loader, a cherry picker, in the middle of the night, or a forklift, or ten guys to do something they were right there. We did need a cherry picker during the inflation. We had a twisted line up inside the hot air cone. We called for it and five minutes later they drove it down. You name it they were there for us. They were a sponsor at that point.

We had some really stiff surface winds during the launch and down in the pit it was dead calm. We had our doubts because when you released a pibal you saw some swirling. The flags [on top] were standing straight out the balloon was just standing there.

BL: How did you decide that the weather was right for launching? I looked at the jet stream maps and thought you and Steve were crazy.

KU: We didn't have clearance over China or Russia so our plan was to takeoff and spent part of our time parked over the Atlantic and then head further south ending up over parts of North Africa, cutting as far south as we could over India, and then we would have to cross over China. Unless, we could use the Monsoon to bring us farther south. We had a pretty good flow. It was about a ten and a half day route if we got into the right stream.

Our plan was not to cross the Atlantic very quickly. That is all that I have to say about it. Our strategic plan would not have keep us over the Atlantic where Steve was.

BL: You had a great launch. Climbed to altitude. What happened?

KU: The balloon initially took off with 900 pounds of free lift and I was carrying an addition 300 pounds of sand ballast onboard. We knew we would be hitting certain inversions. We knew where the temperature inversions were. The intention was to fly the balloon as a gas balloon the first night. I added heat in the beginning because that is free lift that goes away very quickly. In that quarry situation you really couldn't have too much free lift. I came out and peaked at about 800 feet per minute and then very quickly slowed to 500-600 feet per minute.

At 4,000 feet we slowed down. At that point I dropped the rest of my ballast. Got to another inversion at 7-8,000 feet. At that point I turned the burners on and used them for awhile through 15,000 feet and turned them off. The balloon continued on up at under 500 feet per minute and the ascent slowed.

I got to somewhere just over 21,000 feet and knew I should be getting to my ceiling. Both of the appendixes were slack. I looked over to my left and that one was slack. Then I looked over to my right and suddenly that one filled with helium. Very quickly, much more quickly than you would expect. It filled and stopped, helium didn't come out the bottom. I thought that was very strange. I looked at the other one and it was empty. I shook the rope that attaches it to the capsule to see if something tangled on the bottom. Didn't appear to be anything wrong. I pulled on the valve rope to see if something was tangled further up. I thought something weird is going on.

I reached for my knife and that was when there was this huge explosion. I turned the light on and looked up into the balloon and there were shreds of fabric everywhere. What had happened is the balloon went through its ceiling and kept pressurizing and neither appendix was venting. It just burst.

The whole bottom end is gone. There were at least eight radial tears across it from end to end. Other tears up near the arms of the appendix. Cameron used fast tack buckles inside of sewing the appendix on or using medal clips. That was a design change this year. I believe that it was a combination of the weight of the appendix and the design of the exit from the balloon that caused it to close on itself. At that point it became kind of a pressure relief valve.

BL: Why didn't Breitling have this problem?

KU: They made lots of revision to that balloon. I not sure as to the extend of all the revisions. I would also like to see their gross takeoff weight figures and see if they ever went to their ceiling. If I were them I wouldn't have. I gave them a pretty clear warning that I didn't think that they fixed their balloon. Maybe they had.

They made modification to Rutan's balloon but not what I thought was the problem and I told them so when I talked to them.

BL: What was it like when the gas cell burst?

KU: Scary. The first thing that occurred to me was I just couldn't believe that it happened. I thought about all the time and money that went into this to be foiled by this stupid mechanical failure. Next, I realized I didn't know what was going to happened to this balloon. It didn't know if there were tears on top, if it was going to rupture. I knew when I heard the sound what had happened, I just didn't know extent of the damage.

I turned on all the burners and threw on my parachute, the fastest that I have ever put it on. Then looked at the rate of ascent and realized that I was climbing and shut off the burners. The balloon rounded out 23,700 and started back down. There was a gradual loss of helium. The balloon got progressively heavier over the next two hours.

I called air traffic control to declare an emergency. I had to call three times before they were convinced that there was a real emergency. I started a descent and whenever the descent would get over 500 feet per minute the balloon would start making really bad noises, tearing and popping. So I kept the descent under 500 [feet per minute] and used the burners.

Chuck Thomas got in his airplane with my family and chased me down. Air traffic control called Indiana State Police, on Rob Schantz's recommendation, to send a helicopter out. The helicopter was going to get to me about the same time Chuck did so they asked me to maintain 3,000 feet so we wouldn't lose communications. I stayed there for 10, 15, 20 minutes and then started back down. Chuck stayed at 3-4,000 feet and acted as a relay with air traffic control because the helicopter couldn't pickup air traffic control at the lower altitudes.

We were all on a first name basis at that point. We let all the radio lingo go out the window. The helicopter pilot would come across fields that he would point out to me. At first, he would do what people typically do. Well, here is a good spot and he would be way off to one side. I got on the radio with him and I said, Don you have to understand that I can land only in the direction that the balloon is traveling. Best thing you can do is get out in front of me and fly about 2,000 feet ahead of me looking for spots.

Air traffic control was reading a map and told us where big powerlines were. The helicopter pilot spotted them for me and I climbed over them. He found a field very soon after that. I came down in that field. It was actually a very gentle landing. The trail ropes help a lot. The landing was really gentle. The tanks made a lot of noise because I still had them all. I didn't drop tanks because I was over a really populated area the whole time until just before I landed. Besides, I couldn't part with all that expensive equipment. So when I landed the tanks made lots of noise.

On the first bounce both oxygen hoses parted and I thought all this hissing was propane. So when the balloon bounced back into the air a little ways I got out and looked but it was oxygen fortunately. I reached over turned off one [oxygen] tank. It was very dark night but as I looked over the edge I could see the ground coming up at me very quickly. So crouched back down inside still pulling on the valve as hard as I can.

The first time I hit the ground and pulled the valve line I heard three pops, that is the three safety catches, the fourth one is suppose to open the top. The top didn't open. Then on the third bounce I climbed up on top of the capsule pulling the line and jumping with it back into the capsule to try and get the valve open. It wouldn't open.

After third bounce the fireman were behind me running along and following with their truck. They shouted and said, "Do you want us to tie you off." And I said yes. What they did was take my trail ropes and tied them to the bumper of their truck. That really slowed the balloon down although I was still dragging.

The fourth time I touched down I contacted one of these overhead irrigation structures and knocked three lengths of it over and bent some pipe. With that and the fire truck we stopped. While the pipe was bending it was making this really erriee sound.

I threw all the redline out of the balloon and asked the firemen to pull on it as hard as they could. It turns out to be a geometry problem. I was trying to pull in a direction that didn't work. Another design problem. The fireman, about nine of them, really hung on it before it actually pulled. That took all the lift out of the balloon. It then turned into a huge parachute. I wound up cutting all the bottom load tapes with my knife.

The whole landing sequence probably didn't take a minute and a half. The bounces weren't very high, maybe 40 feet.

BL: How long did it take to recover the equipment?

KU: The next day. Guy Gauthier organized this massive effort. Some 35 people came out there and pickup everything. Got the snow off the balloon and took it back to Rockford. I didn't do any of that, it was Guy and all the volunteers.

BL: Is the gondola reusable?

KU: Yes. The gondola was designed with water holding keels in the bottom. Those keels were designed to crush when you land to protect the occupant. Even the Huckleberry pie, my favorite, that Renée gave me before I took off didn't get damaged in the landing. So it was a pretty soft landing. Both keels were dented but they have been fixed and ready to fly again.

A lot of my other equipment was borrowed and people and corporations want it back now. We will have to go through this whole process again next year of borrowing equipment.

We are actually in a worse position right now then we were in one year ago. At least last year we were in a financially clear position.

BL: Where are you in the process for trying again?

KU: We are trying to get all the equipment stowed properly. Get everything ready that we can for a try next season.

We are at the point now that there is no way we can do it [from a financial standpoint]. There is no way I can keep this debt going for another summer and try to organize this project. I am working in Chicago and Renée is working in Phoenix. There is just no way we can continue, we will have to start selling equipment. The real unfortunate truth is we will start selling off what we can and maybe come back some day and try to do this.

I am really torn in two directions. I wish a sponsor would come along and drop $100,000 in my lap.

BL: What lessons did you learn from this?

KU: Don't trust anybody. I have a tendency to not delicate things that are important or critical in my life. In this case everything above the burner frame was delegated. I should have made sure that I understood all the engineering that went into this balloon design. If there were design changes I should have evaluated them.

The thing that is really odd to me is the failure I experienced, and that Rutan and Melton experienced, have nothing to do with trying to fly a balloon around the world. You almost wish that one of the special systems like burner, solenoid, autopilot, all that stuff you put a lot of energy into, you wish that one of those had a technical failure. A balloon just explodes, they are not suppose to do that.

Everything can go wrong when you wouldn't expect it. I would not have dreamed in a million years that Cameron would have built a balloon wouldn't operate. At least be structurally sound.