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Donald Trump and his wife left the White House and boarded a waiting government helicopter. He lifted him into the air, heading for Andrews Air Force Base, where a special plane was waiting to take the former president to his headquarters in Florida. The show-loving politician did not solemnly transfer power over the United States to the PA to his successor. He left office in a style that insulted a man of class. He only has money left.

Hardly concealed anger and Trump's post-election emotions were hardly conducive to enjoying the surface of the earth observed from the air. Internally gurgling, he certainly didn't feel like this kind of elation. Joe Biden's America under the wings of an airplane certainly did not please him at the moment.

Different with me. I love space and enjoy the views of the earth observed from the air. Few sunny winter days always make me check and analyze meteorological forecasts and observe the sky. Unfortunately, covid hysteria messed up our plans. The authorities call for limiting contacts and movement. Power-motivated policemen make life difficult for citizens. And confused people curse the authorities, the police and the virus. The weather seems to fit into this state of limitations.

Just a year ago, everything looked very good. Colleagues from mid-January 2020 played at the balloon competition in Tannheimer Tal on the Austrian-Bavarian border. At that time, I was looking after the balloon business on the spot - in the country. Ready for balloon flights with passengers over Silesia.

Ready to carry passengers in a hot air balloon. In March 2020, due to an unknown novel coronavirus, the authorities blocked the possibility of such flying. For two months I could only look at the clear sky with regret. And dream of flying.

The beginning of 2021, paralyzed by strange, not always well-thought-out moves and decisions of state authorities, looks similar. Again, I have more time to go through and organize my aviation junk.

Last year, part of my aviation archive was dumped after feces flooded my former studio apartment. This happened in less than a year - replacing the old sewage riser with a new one. The old, original sewage system from the 1970s did not cause any problems for 30 years. After the replacement, it didn't take a year for the materials left there to qualify only for throwing away. The bosses of the housing cooperative in Katowice's Tysiąclecie district have nothing to reproach themselves with. Guilty - other tenants, because they used the sewage system excessively during the pandemic. They sat at home, ate and…

I must admit that when I started my adventure with the air in my high school years, I didn't think that after many years I would associate the most beautiful memories with balloons. Although then, at the beginning of my aviation journey, I had no plans to deal with something as stationary in the air as a balloon. Every young person loves speed and sometimes height. I had it. The plan was simple. First gliders, then planes. And professional civilian flying.

However, life - especially in the People's Republic of Poland - was able to verify individual plans. It often turned out that wanting is not always being able. Because that power had its own long-term calculations and intentions. And aviation was one of the most regulated disciplines. It was then ruled by the military. And they dealt the cards, often marked. Today's government behaves similarly. Except he calls it pro-family policy. politics for their own.

But nothing to complain about. A few thousand hours in the air is really a lot of adventures and memories. Half of it is balloons, which I took care of by accident. Or rather, because of the driver's license I had previously done. Well, one day in the 1970s, the club's balloon section had a plan to launch a gas balloon from the Provincial Park of Culture and Recreation in Chorzów. The occasion was official, commissioned by the provincial committee of the Polish United Workers' Party. On the occasion of national holidays, the KW PZPR organized various festivities and events for Silesian workers in the aforementioned park. This was the case on May 1, on the feast day of the party newspaper, which was the Silesian "Trybuna Robotnicza", on July 22 and other ad hoc occasions. One of the attractions was a balloon. Then - a gas balloon, the one for flights in the Gordon Bennett Cup, for the longest distance.

This was just one of those occasions. The authorities expected that the flying club would fulfill its task in favorable weather conditions. Only the balloon section just lacked a driver. The club had no full-time driver. And since I had already taken the club car many times before to pick up gliders that landed in random terrain, it fell on me.

And so, as a glider, I became the driver of the balloon section. Club Nysa with the trailer I was doing well. After the experience with the long glider trailer, the short balloon trailer didn't cause me any trouble. Well, except maybe technically. She could break down unexpectedly or lose a wheel while driving.

And so, during one of the subsequent trips for a flight with WPKiW, my fellow balloonists decided that as a reward for following them socially, I should fly in a balloon. I remember I wasn't drawn to it and defended myself against their idea. Because, as I said before, I didn't see anything interesting about sitting in a basket suspended under the balloon's envelope. But they've already decided.

After more than two hours of hard work preparing the balloon for flight, hanging 200 ballast bags with sand several times, I took a place in the basket of the balloon together with a few older colleagues. Approx. Thirty bags of sand hung outside the basket, and inside another six took up part of the floor. The balloon, weighed by the commander, slightly lifted off the ground and began to ascend at a low speed of less than a meter per second. Below, on the ground, we were bid farewell by several thousand people who had previously watched the preparations for the launch.

The launch was noiseless. The balloon rose silently higher and higher, taking the direction to the northwest, towards Piekary Śląskie and Tarnowskie Góry. Down, down, the park, full of shouting, frantic people, got smaller and smaller. The mighty blocks of the Millennium also lost their size. Even the Silesian Stadium with its high press tower for guests and journalists has visibly shrunk. I stood in the open space and leaned against the side of the basket, watching calmly the images that slowly passed below us. We rose to approx. 1.5 thousand. m above the ground and sailed over Silesian cities.

I didn't have to do anything on this flight, I could only observe. It was the first time I was so high above the ground with an open cabin. I didn't even have to wear a parachute. Emergency parachutes rested in the corner of the basket, next to the ballast sandbags.

It was a completely new, amazing experience. Sounds from the ground could be heard in the silence of the balloon. After passing Tarnowskie Góry, the balloon's commander lowered the flight to about 100 m above the ground. When we reached the village buildings, the towns came to life. The closer we got to the houses, the louder it got, and more dogs barked and fowl added their voices. Geese honked, ducks quacked, hens cackled. The cluttering hens were nervously herding their chicks into the henhouses. Also ducks and geese tried to hide in chicken coops or under dense bushes. But they did it slower and more majestically than hens. The barking and noise caused by domestic birds provoked some residents to investigate the cause of the noise. I saw them go and check on the ground what was the reason for this behavior. Until someone from the crew spoke up, almost no one on the ground looked up at the sky. Only the voice from above made the hosts aware of the cause of the unprecedented chaos. Some took the opportunity to talk to the balloon crew.

After more than four hours of flight, we landed near Lubliniec. The landing was smooth and gentle. Yet, on touchdown, a slight shudder passed through the balloon's envelope, and a ball of soot fell from an open sleeve at the bottom of the balloon into the bin, blackening everyone on board and turning my new white T-shirt into a dark gray rag. Plus the smelly coke gas we used to fill the shell. It was a surprise for me, because every time I drove my car to the balloon, it was already packed, and my friends were dressed in clothes other than for the flight.

This is how I had my balloon baptism. It was June 1978 and I already knew what my older colleagues saw in balloon flights.

Since then I have become a permanent member of the balloon section and tried to be in the basket as a member of the flight crew whenever I could.

10 years later - in 1988 - the club received its first hot air balloon. A year later, we got another one, and I got my free balloon pilot's license and spent more and more time flying balloons. The more so that the plans of professional aviation still did not move towards a happy finale.

Hot air balloons have greatly increased our flying capabilities. They did not require as much work and preparation as a gas balloon. In order to fly the LNG carrier, we had to bring 4 tons of sand to the launch site, which had to be poured into approx. 200 bags, which were used to ballast the shell during filling with gas lighter than air. This gas was usually flammable. In Silesia, it was coke oven gas, then commonly used to power household gas cookers throughout the agglomeration. Outside Silesia, we used hydrogen. Coke oven gas had one disadvantage - it contained a large amount of soot (on average 15-20 g/m3), which in apartments caused clogging of nozzles in cookers. And for a balloon with a capacity of 2200 cubic meters. meant about 30-40 kg of soot settling inside the coating with each filling. This soot, each time it touched down, turned into a black, flying ball falling into the basket. In addition, the shell of such a balloon weighed only 450 kg and it took at least eight men to move it or even load it onto a trailer. A similar envelope for a hot air balloon weighed only 90 kg. A colossal difference.

It takes about 10-15 minutes for a crew of four to set up a hot air balloon, after which the balloon can safely fly away. The gas carrier - for a dozen or so people - took two to four hours of really hard work.

Surely some of you have had the opportunity to fly in a hot air balloon. Egypt – the Valley of the Kings or Cappadocia in Turkey are probably the most famous places for such flights. American Albuquerque brings together several hundred hot air balloons every year. The wealthier could experience a morning safari from a large balloon in Kenya.

Today hot air balloons are everywhere. Different sizes and usually very colorful, attract attention from a distance. Personally, after years of sport flying, I became an instructor and a commercial balloon pilot.

I am one of the pilots in the private company of my friends. In our climate, I can make up to two flights a day. The first - early in the morning, just after dawn. The second - about two or three hours before sunset. In tropical and subtropical countries, you can generally only make a morning flight. It gets too hot in the afternoon.

Every hot air balloon flight is unique. Even when flying exactly the same route, each time you have a different experience. Dawn flights, just after sunrise, are often associated with morning dew and local mists in depressions. After night the air is cooler and crisp. In addition, there are no thermal phenomena associated with the action of the sun yet. Winds are more stable and weaker at all altitudes.

The air is still very hot before evening. Mists, which add additional color to the earth's surface, are generally absent. In addition, there are also so-called thermal winds, stronger than in the morning and able to definitely change direction just before the planned landing. However, afternoon flights are more convenient for most passengers. You don't have to get up very early to be in the air at dawn. In addition, the sun-heated earth, evaporating, fills the space above it with various smells of crops, trees or the effects of human activity. It is amazing and surprising.

A hot air balloon is a real eye-catcher. Each use of the burner is a noise that lasts several seconds, audible on the ground from a great distance. And the burner is used often. Except that everyone in the basket quickly gets used to this noise and stops reacting to it. Thanks to modern burners powered by liquid propane or propane-butane, I can pilot each balloon very precisely. And that's regardless of its size. As a pilot, I just have to remember the specifics of the balloon. The greater the capacity of the envelope and the size of the basket, which is related to the number of passengers, the greater the inertia of such a balloon. A smaller balloon reacts faster to the burner operation. Therefore, smaller ones are easier to operate in a low flight, close to the ground, just above the tops of trees or not high above the buildings.

Hot air balloons are called Montgolfiers after the French creators of this type of balloon. Another term used in the environment is mulled wine. Because the balloon obtains its lifting force due to the significant heating of the air enclosed inside the envelope. During the flight, its temperature can reach up to 120 degrees Celsius.

In my experience, the best views are in flight between 50 and 200m above the ground. From these heights, all elements of the earth's surface can be seen in detail, and in conditions of high transparency of the air, you can see up to 60-70 km horizontally. In addition, all creatures on the earth's surface react to a balloon flying in this altitude range and are easily noticeable from the basket. Sometimes I climb much higher - up to 1500 or 2000 m. But then all the details of the surface are blurred. No animals or people are seen anymore. Even noticing a large car can be a big hassle for the average person. Well, distance matters. Whether horizontally or vertically. A kilometer is a kilometer, whether we look ahead or below us. Flying high is most often like looking at a map. But at higher altitudes you can fly faster than just above the ground. This is due to the nature of the earth's atmosphere. But this is the concern of the pilot who plans to perform a given flight. Because you have to prepare for each flight separately.

Good preparation allows you to avoid unpleasant surprises and achieve a state of almost euphoric elation and satisfaction. Such elation can take our psyche to completely unknown regions. Our Earth is really beautiful when we look at it even from a small height, for example, just above the top of a tree. you don't believe?

zak1953

Photos: Tomasz Raszka, Adam Gruszecki, lotybalonem.pl