Tis the season...

for around-the-world by balloon flights. This winter, five balloons teams are hoping to be the first and grab the $1 million Budweiser Cup prize. Kevin Uliassi, with J. Renee, is back and prepared to have another go at it solo from Rockford, Illinois. Last winter his envelope ruptured and he was forced to land at night.

Steve Fossett has joined Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand. The Virgin Global Challenger has a new major sponsor and has been renamed ICO Global Challenger. Per Lindstrand has recently conducted test flights in the high desert near Reno, Nevada. All equipment is expected to be in Marrakech by early December.

Breitling Orbitor 3 will be taking off from Chateau d'Oex, Switzerland. Only Bertrand Piccard remains from the original crew. He is joined by Anthony Brown, a Concorde pilot for British Airways. Brown has been a balloon pilot since 1983 and has 1500 balloon hours plus his 5500 hours as a supersonic pilot.

Spirit of Peace with Jacques Soukup, Crispin Williams, and Mark Sullivan are getting ready for launch in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A new entrant this year, they will be flying a Cameron Roziere, similar to J. Renee and Breitling-Orbitor 3.

All four teams will be making their attempt in the Northern Hemisphere.

The fifth team will be taking a totally different approach. Team RE/MAX is staging in Australia for a Southern Hemisphere attempt. Unlike Fossett's attempt this past summer, Team RE/MAX will be flying east to west at the edge of space, between 80,000 to 130,000 feet.

Should none of these teams make it, two more are preparing for Southern Hemisphere attempts next summer. Dick Rutan and Dave Melton are back with a revamped program. While complete funding is not yet in place, Rutan has built a new capsule. Rutan tells Balloon Life that his team plans to launch from Santiago, Chile using a four cluster superpressure balloon system.

Also announced for a Southern Hemisphere try next summer is a South African team of Gerrit Coetzze, Terry Adams, and Kevin Robinson.

And, there may be another team or two waiting to jump into the hunt.

For those whose might catch the RTW mania and need a capsule, Larry Newman has one for sale. No longer able to sky dive he has taken himself out of contention. The Earthwinds capsule, tested and proven, is for sale. See his ad on page 23.

Why has my magazine been late?

In part, I took on an extra project this summer. That combined with an ambitious travel schedule to cover events took a greater toll on my time than expected. I felt the SAVE THE BFA project was an important one for the long term health of the sport. The members of the BFA are now in the process of voting on their future and the results will be known in late December.

September, however, experienced an unusual catastrophe. It seems our mail house didn't bother to notify us that the data file for the issue was bad. By the time I called and discovered this the issue had been sitting in their warehouse for more than three weeks. A new file was electronically transmitted and they still took another week to get it in the mail. October mailed a day or two later. The magazine should be back to a more normal distribution by the first of the year.