by Dan Stukas
It was a hot Sunday afternoon in July, in the middle of a great ballooning season. Our launch area was a hayfield about a mile south of the Ohio River in Paducah, Kentucky. The thrill of competition had attracted eleven balloon teams to stay on for this "extra" flight after the Grand Rivers Balloon Rally.
For this hare and hounds flight, the Balloonmeister briefed weather as clear sky, visibility 3-5 miles, temperature 90 degrees, and wind 270 degrees at 5 mph. No convective activity reported within 50 miles. Winds aloft were light and variable at all altitudes. Our own observation was a bit different - HOT AND MUGGY! Not a breeze to be had by anyone. Visibility could not have been more that two miles through all the haze. We could not see any blue in the sky. Our "Sassy" is a 105, but for this flight we opted to include only two passengers.
For this launch, we had twelve local crew members, none of whom had ever been around balloons before. Our sponsor's grandson and his young wife were our passengers. The Balloonmeister's hare balloon finally launched. Fans came to life, and all other balloons soon followed. We happened to be the last balloon airborne, which put us about a mile behind the hare balloon. All the balloons were moving in an easterly direction, so I climbed to about 2,000 feet to get a movement toward the "hare". I noticed I could not see the Ohio River just to the North.
On the ground, the crew chief had her hands full getting all these people into the Chase Commander. As she was completing this task, all-of-a-sudden the wind came up. It was refreshingly cool, blowing the sweat from her face. Alarm bells went off in her head! On the radio, she transmits,
"Sassy, there is a cool light breeze here." This radical change from "Hot and Muggy" to "Cool Breeze" made me strain my eyes and ears for anything unusual in the atmosphere. Five more minutes go by. I've gotten a good line on the hare, and all the other, more experienced pilots are still doing their thing.
My crew chief transmits,
"The wind speed is picking up. It's probably about 5 to 6 mph and really cool." Less than 15 minutes after launch, I hear distant thunder. I NOW WANT TO LAND. All the other balloons are still flying on. On our CB radio we begin hearing calls from other pilots saying they hear the thunder and we all need to get on the ground. I watch the hare pass over two large fields and I deeply wish he would just hurry up, land and put the target out. There are good spots everywhere for quick landings after we dropped on the target. I think,
"Come on, Mr. Balloonmeister, don't you hear the thunder?" Two more precious minutes go by and I now see lightning through the haze to the north. I give up! I quit! I tell the passengers and transmit to chase,
"I'm not going to the target. I'm landing ASAP!" I noted that the hare balloon had just landed about a half mile in front of me.
THEN IT HAPPENED. Our wild ride begins! The wind from the thunderstorm hit all of the balloons as one giant hand slapping us on our left cheeks. We immediately turned 90 degrees right, to the South, and our speed picked up to 35 to 40 mph. The whole side of the new, blue and white balloon beside us was caved in, and I could see the burner flame going through the balloon fabric. We are about 1,000 feet AGL, when the wind hit, and I kept putting heat in our balloon to maintain its shape.
Two or three balloons out in front of us had managed to land before the wind got to them. The "Blue and White" pilot must have decided that he wanted to be on the ground real bad. He set up a glide path to a large corn field, but the corn was waving like white-caps on the ocean. We watched him drag through corn stalks for a distance of about 500 yards before he stopped up against the trees at the field boundary. What a ride that must have been!
Once the wind got us, our chase crew never saw us again. Our crew chief said that the wind was bending over all the trees. As she drove down the country roads, people were out on their porches looking for signs of tornadoes. It started raining - real thunderstorm rain - big drops and lots of them! She almost could not see to drive. The only person in the van that knew the danger that faced us was the crew chief. The others did not quite grasp the idea of our potential, near-death experience.
I stayed high, above 1,500 feet until I thought I detected a decrease in wind speed. About ten minutes after the "Blue and White show" in the cornfield, I began a slow 200 fpm descent. Passing through approximately 800 AGL, a tremendous downdraft got us and I "burned" all the way down. At 30 mph and still descending, we crashed through a medium-sized oak tree! This is a great pilot technique for stopping high descent rates (ha ha). Of course, all that heat sent us back up to the sky, where we stayed for at least ten more minutes. I kept thinking,
"What if that tree had been powerlines?" Surprisingly, my passengers never showed any concern for their own safety, but stated many times during the flight that this was great fun. I guess ignorance is bliss after all.
Our speed had now dropped to 25 mph, so I got my nerve up to try another slow descent to a long field with NO powerlines. Below 500 feet AGL, we experienced turbulence, swaying, bouncing and wind gusts, but no great downdrafts. Crossing the field boundary about 100 feet high, I shut off the tanks and pilot light to minimize fire danger. I fully opened the parachute vent about three seconds before the "landing." We hit HARD and dragged about 80 feet. I started to get out as the basket came to a halt, but the balloon, not yet completely deflated, began to drag us some more and trapped my leg between the basket and the ground. I got real "mean" with the vent line and we came to a final stop. The field was old-plowed and overgrown, but we sustained no damage to people or balloon.
So where is the crew? They were stopping and asking everyone, "Have you seen any balloons? What color? Where? What direction were they going?" Two different people had reported that they had seen our Sassy balloon.
"Yes, it was a rainbow-looking balloon, but it had a real funny shape, and it went that way." The tension in the Chase Commander increased to near the breaking point.
About five minutes after our landing, we heard a voice calling from way upon a road that we had passed over during our approach to landing. It was a man in a utility company pickup truck, the foreman of the Emergency Weekend Crew, who had been called out to be ready when the storm hit. He had radio contact with his wife, who called our lost balloon number to give our status and location. Of course, it was a long distance call. The foreman's crew of four soon showed up, loaded the balloon into the truck and took us to their equipment depot, which turned out to be a large, covered drive-through building. Two minutes after we were under cover, the rain from the thunderstorm began. We never got a drop on us. (Must have been all our clean living!) I called the lost balloon number and was told that Chase had called and was now on the way to us. Five minutes later they arrived at our covered "hangar." What a GREAT crew! What a GREAT REUNION!
Nine of the eleven balloons that flew that day sustained some sort of damage, with one so burned that it never flew again. Two people went to the hospital - one with a broken shoulder and one with a broken ankle.
Ed Note: What would you have done when you heard the thunder? Would you have landed when you heard about the "cool breeze?"