PostFlight - March 1998

Good Instruction

Editor: Five years ago, I organized a Liberty Balloon Company ground school here in Sioux Falls. My purpose for doing so was to provide a concentrated two-day course for my 16-year-old daughter while she was home for Christmas break. The next year, I had another student in need of ground school and organized another class. Last weekend was our fifth annual Liberty Balloon Company ground school and it's been easier and easier to fill the class each year. It has provided me and other flight instructors in our area a classroom atmosphere for our students with 20 hours of Carroll Teitsworth's accumulated knowledge and expertise. It's been a great deal for the part-time flight instructor in that it allows us to spend more time flying and less evenings and weekends providing ground instruction for one student at a time. The students love the class, make new ballooning friends, have great test scores and return again as an alumnae.

While visiting with Carroll, I came to the realization that he has been traveling the country teaching hot air balloon ground school for more than twenty years. That adds up to thousands of students out there. What a tremendous contribution to the growth of ballooning.

One of the reasons that the flight instructor rating was shot down recently was because it would tend to eliminate the instructors out there that teach one or two students a year and thus drastically effect the growth of the sport. How many of us would be pilots today if we all had had to pack up and go to a 141 school? How many of us are piloting balloons today with the help of Carroll Teitsworth's Liberty Balloon Company ground school? How many of us would be living our dreams without the dedication and commitment of many commercial pilot/flight instructors? Without the growth of ballooning, where would we be today in terms of technology, quality, safety and training?

I applaud Carroll Teitsworth for his dedication and support of ballooning. He should be honored for a job well done.

Kay West

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Burning rubber

Editor: A difference of opinion is what makes horse racing viable. Mr. Winker states that it was well known that there were differences of opinion between me and then President of Raven, Ed Owen. There certainly were! Primarily regarding using load tapes on sport balloons (He didn't want to spend the extra $26 per balloon Dick Plato estimated it would cost for that important safety feature.), redundant burners and wicker for non-resilient energy absorbing basket construction. In fact, there were probably as many differences of opinion at Raven in those days as there were employees. Ed Owen, the hockey player, was reportedly put in by the investors to stop the obstructionist bickering and dissension among the founding fathers at Sioux Falls. But more importantly, Mr. Owen and I disagreed about sport ballooning. After Ed Yost's Raven balloon burst on launch in competition at Reno, the company policy was to withdraw from any competitive events. He used the trite quotation "What if SOMETHING happens?"

As I did not request or get transfer or reinstatement of my government security clearance after the move from The G. T. Schjeldahl Company to Raven Industries I have no reason to know the technical manner regarding the end of the "Government" hot air balloon contracts. (I don't find Jim's quote " ..the Raven sport balloon program died..." anywhere). But it did end. There was no further reason, other than sport, for Raven to continue and I was fired.

Jim's statement "If Don Piccard had not existed, the sport would nevertheless be alive today through Raven's efforts, though probably in a different form." is pure conjecture. I put that Raven would, indeed, have started a "Sport Balloon Program" without me for the same reasons it started one using me. But also that they would have terminated it for the same reasons at the same time.

Mark Semich would have appeared and done his thing. In the absence of my pop top he might even have created his own. Tracy Barnes would have still been a major influence. But he still would have pursued the barnstorming and resisted competition, just as the cadre of gas balloonists in Europe and the U.S. resisted proliferation of that sport. (Bill Meadows had to practically force Tracy to sell Bill his first balloon - the Piccard "Kitty Hawk".) Perhaps if I had not had the St. Paul Winter Carnival race Tracy would not have gone on the shopping center circuit as the "U.S. Champion Balloonist," but have stayed in school and graduated as did Jim Winker.

In regard to "Graceland," Paul Simon said "Yes, anybody COULD have done it, but I did." But they probably would have done it differently. I know that Barnes and Semich would have done it differently. My direction and promotion of this new sport was as a result of my peculiar and unique previous exposures: European sports lore as described by my father, scientific experimental flights of both my parents, free spending U.S. Navy wartime ballooning, civilian surplus city gas ballooning (my Balloon Club of America). When I got to Raven, they never even landed a balloon without jumping ship. There were reasons for that, and Tom, if you wish, I can devote a future column to them.

Anthony Smith reminisces about the battle I fought with the establishment in "The Aerostat" of the British Balloon and Airship Club. It was an uphill battle with the Raven people, the existing balloon community and, especially, the general public. We had to legitimize Hot Air Ballooning as a sport and as a gentlemen's sport, not a carnival charlatan's exhibition.

We had to build them in a different manner and operate them in a different manner to utilize their new and unique characteristics. And we did. (Netted gas balloons were just too much work and just too damn expensive. This new device of Ed Yost's made a revolution possible.)

I was given (and later sued for payment for) the inventory of wicker fronds and the fabric for the first AX-2. I was offered the existing inventory of a few hot air balloons "at cost" which I declined as those costs were much too high. At that time Mr. Winker was not an officer of the company and was not involved in sport balloons as far as I could tell. I was "Manager" of the sport balloon program. I presume that I would have known.

While Ed Owen wanted to fire me for "Burning Rubber" the length of the shop floor in my Morris Minor and ruining the linoleum tile, he never threw ash trays around his office at me as he did with at least one other during a departure exit interview. (If I had driven my car slowly off the loading dock, it would have hung up, so naturally I had to make several maximum accelerations across that shiny floor. So it wasn't my fault that some sophomoric engineer had arranged for storage of my car in my office while I was off on the job.)

When I left, Ed Owen told me he was letting me go because I had been hired to run the sport balloon operation and they were terminating it. After I left South Dakota, Raven forwarded sport balloon inquiries to me, including the watershed contact from Dale Gates that turned the tide for Don Piccard - Balloons. Raven has also published owner/pilot sketches in their newsletter that show unequivocally that they were not in the business of sport balloons. They have reported in their publication that they told one inquirer from Louisville, at least, to "come back later, as they may get back into the business."

Don Piccard

Balloon@msn.com

Minneapolis, Minnesota