Wisconsin - Balloon Flight

10/03/2016 - Andrew Holly

Driving 15 hours yesterday arriving at 3am this morning on a marginal forecast some might say is crazy. Maybe it is but then as a friend and fellow balloonist David Medcalf once said, "youll never fly if youre not in the launch field". I think this says a lot about the team dedication - we are all incredibly exhausted and after landing yesterday the plan was to take two days to get up here and try and fly tonight. But I just felt there was the chance of flying and so armed with an iPod and earl grey tea, we set off aiming west. The navigation started with eta 2am and 1030 miles :-/ The forecast was for the winds to quicken immediately after sunrise and our first met balloon of the morning 30 minutes before sunrise and 3 hours after arriving at the hotel from New Jersey, 1000 miles away, showed a good inversion but quick winds above. We found a friendly landowner and just 8 minutes after sunrise we were in the air. Stress free flying as huge open fields and this then gave us the idea for a second flight. We landed in a field with a farmer already there watching from his quad bike who was bemused that we drove from New Jersey yesterday to fly here. So friendly, we began to tell him about our project and mentioned we could get a second flight in South of the state line and his response was "I have a field 6 miles away, its in Illinois. That any use to you?" And with that 30 minutes later we were in Illinois assessing the winds.....