Your best defense to avoid in-flight collisions with obstacles or other balloons is an efficient scan pattern.
by Tom Hamilton
Colliding with a powerline, tower, another balloon or other obstacle can ruin your flight, not to mention your day. The number one cause of Inflight collisions reported by pilots is their failure to see the obstacle.
You say you are always looking outside the basket? Talking with people on the ground, watching the wildlife run, and looking for interesting landmarks doesn't count. You are still not scanning for obstacles or potential flight hazards. Next time you launch, make an approach to land or just float across the sky check yourself to see how long you go without looking around for potential hazards.
Glancing out and giving it the once around without stopping to focus on anything is practically useless. So is staring at one spot for long periods of time. What you need to develop is a good scanning pattern. How do you do that?
First, know where to concentrate your search. It would be preferable, naturally, to look everywhere constantly, but that is not practical. Instead, concentrate on the areas most critical to you at any given time. At launch or climb out the area directly ahead is important and so is the area behind and below where other balloons may be overtaking you. Avoid tunnel vision. Target fixation has caused many pilots to "roundout" many feet below the surface or even fly into hazardous obstacles.
In normal flight you can generally avoid the threat of obstacles by scanning an area 60 degrees to the left and right of your flight path. But don' t forget the rest of the area that can be seen from the basket.
Depending on the proximity of other balloons, you are generally safe with a horizontal scan from 10 degrees above to the surface below within the 60 degrees left/right line. The amount of your vertical scan depends on your forward airspeed. The faster you are traveling, the less down angle required. As your speed decreases the area of your scan should increase.
The close proximity to passengers in the basket may sometimes block your line of sight. Use your passengers to help you look for hazards. The more eyes looking for danger, the better.
Horizontally scan from just above your flight path down to the ground.
Vertically scan 60 degrees left and right of your flight path.
When using the block method of scanning and large horizontal areas need to be observed, break each block into two or more vertical viewing areas as in the example to the left.
