Gas ballooning is magical, it’s like Jules Vernes’ “Five weeks in a balloon”. You can drift in the air during several hours, even several days like in Gordon Benett Cups… as long as you have ballast on board to jettison, thus controlling altitude and descent.

But set up and pack up are not very easy: the rubber fabric envelope weighs several hundred pounds, so do the ballast pouches filled with sand. Several hundred cubic meters of gas are needed to fill the envelope. For a one day flight, inflation starts early in the morning and pack up ends late at night.

For our own flight, with tricky weather (not enough wind for once!) we rode 45 km, but it took 8 hours… We used 800 cubic meters of hydrogen, 1 ton of sand, out of which about 300 kilos were thrown over board during the flight as embarked ballast.  The sensations on board as well as piloting are totally different from those on board a hot air balloon, but it’s a great experience too.