NASA Ballunar Festival

[JohnRich 4]

This will be a report on the NASA Ballunar Festival, held in Houston, Texas, August 26-27, 2006.

The annual "Ballunar" Festival is held by NASA as an air show of non-traditional aviation activities. The name is a combination of "balloon" and "lunar", and the purpose is to raise funds for science scholarships. The type of aviation activities generally exclude winged aircraft, and the main attraction is hot-air balloons. The other aviation activities include things like model rockets, gyrocopters, radio-control aircraft, hang gliders, powered parachutes, and skydivers.

This year there were three teams of 16-skydivers each, with each team making five jumps into the NASA facility over the weekend. Considering the number of jumpers landing at the site, it is one of the largest demo jumps, if not the largest, held each year. Jumps were made from the Aggies Over Texas Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft, which used nearby Ellington Field as the base of operations.

That's the basic summary. Now, on with some photos!

The activities start on Friday night with a "Balloon Glow". This is where a bunch of the hot air balloons get together in a field at sunset, inflate their balloons, and then fire the burners and light them all up simultaneously. They stay tethered and do not actually take flight at this time. There were about 50 balloons this year, but only a couple dozen fit in the field at one time.

Photo 1: balloons being inflated.
Photo 2: balloons glowing. (Ignore that old fart in the foreground wearing the silly t-shirt.)
Photo 3: close-up of two balloons glowing

[JohnRich 4]

An assortment of some of the balloons present.

The most unusual was the Scheppe's dairy balloon, in the shape of a giant cow. There used to be one shaped like the Space Shuttle, but it was absent this year, and someone told me it "caught on fire". Another odd one was the Well's Fargo balloon, shaped like an old west stagecoach.

In one competition balloon event, they all launch somewhere far upwind of the NASA grounds. The goal is to select the perfect launch point and navigate the air currents so as to make a low fly-by at the NASA field, and to drop a streamer precisely onto a target. If the basket touches the ground, they are disqualified. So they have to come over the tops of buildings, drop down into the field without touching, throw their streamer, then fire the burners and go high again to clear the buildings at the other end of the field. It's fun and interesting to watch. The best accuracy wins a prize, which one year consisted of a brand new car.

More to come tomorrow.

[AggieDave 6]

You old farts are all the same...Aggies Over Texas closed in 1999. Skydive Aggieland opened in 2002.

The snakes on the plane were an added bonus from a tandem student the week prior.

Do you have any pictures of the jumps or festivaties?

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[Merkur 1]

Who won the 16way?

vSCR No.94
Don't dream your life - live your dream!

[JohnRich 4]

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You old farts are all the same...Aggies Over Texas closed in 1999. Skydive Aggieland opened in 2002.

Noted. It's the Aggie-something drop zone.

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The snakes on the plane were an added bonus from a tandem student the week prior.

One female jumper was deathly afraid of snakes, and even though they were fake, I was worried about the anxiety it would cause her, distracting her from her jump. So I removed them for the duration of the weekend. But I thought they looked kinda cool.

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Do you have any pictures of the jumps or festivaties?

More to come. I don't have jump photos, so maybe one of the freefall photographers can post a few.

[JohnRich 4]

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Who won the 16way?

Well, the "competition" kind of fell through. Team "blue" didn't get their first jump done because of thunderstorms that moved through. And by the time the storms finished, we switched to a fun-jump format. So there really wasn't any valid competition.

[JohnRich 4]

Photos from the flightline at Ellington Field. These first three military aircraft were parked just a few yards from where we boarded the jump plane.

1) The Cessna Grand Caravan from Skydive Aggieland, Texas.

2) A Navy T-A4, or two-seat training version of the A4 Skyhawk.

3) An F/A-18 Hornet, and an F-16 Falcon. I thought the Hornet was a Navy and Marine aircraft, but this one doesn't have any such markings on it. In fact, it seems to have a "muted" Air Force symbol under the cockpit. What's with that?

4) And the coolest sighting of the weekend: a Russian Antonov-124. This is THE largest aircraft in existance, bigger even than our C5 Galaxy. The wingspan on this monster is 240 feet! There are only about 40 of these in the world. I never saw so many wheels on an airplane before. The next day, we got to witness it taking off - it's hard to imagine something that huge, actually flying.

[JohnRich 4]

Photo 1: A view of the landing area for the demo jumps - the area laid out in a grid pattern. This also served as the balloon field, and the focus for all the other activities. I think the grid pattern was to separate the balloons and get them organized, each with enough space. The buildings are just a portion of the NASA space center complex. There aren't many cars in the lot because the public has to park elsewhere and take a shuttle to this area. It's a large landing area, with plenty of generous "outs", as long as you don't get inside the area where the buildings are. There were no "out" landings, no malfunctions, and no injuries.

Photos 2 & 3: Another fun aspect this year was the packing area. Normally, we're out in the hot sun. But this year we got to pack on the artificial grass inside a brand new humongos hanger that has been built around the Saturn V rocket, which was a spare for the moon landing program. And it was air-conditioned inside! Here you see Bob Heilman packing by the gigantic jet engine nozzles, and many others lined up along the 350-foot long fuselage. Not many people get to be this up-close-and-personal with the largest rocket ever made.

I was the victim of an attack by a crowd of Chinese tourists inside here, who kept asking; "Are you an astronaut?" Even though I said "no" repeatedly, they all insisted on getting their pictures taken with me in my skydiving gear.

[AshDeBash 0]

Nice photos. The An124 is a beast!

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2) A Navy T-A4, or two-seat training version of the A4 Skyhawk.

That's a T45 Goshawk. It's based on the British Aerospace Hawk (as flow by the Red Arrows).

[airgord 1]

The F16 is a AZ Air Guard out of Tucson. The '18 is Navy, the Airforce allows the Navy to use the Star and bars on their aircraft (Navy includes Marines). The Russians built a bigger bird than the '124, The An-224, they built it to haul their version of the spaceshuttle, 6 engines and a split tail sort of like a twin Beech, there was only one flying as of 2003 and it was day to day due to the shit economy over there.

[bob.dino 1]

AN-225

[AggieDave 6]

And according to Wikipedia, if you believe such a resource, the 225 is being used quite a bit for heavy lifting in the civilian world and that they have finish building a 2nd plane for this reason.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[airgord 1]

225, since the accident I sometimes come up short of the numbers.

[JohnRich 4]

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The Russians built a bigger bird than the '124, The An-224, they built it to haul their version of the spaceshuttle... there was only one flying as of 2003...

Ah, I see now that the AN-124 is called the largest "mass produced" aircraft. That qualifies it differently from the one-of-a-kind AN-224. Thanks for that info. It's still a mighty big muther.

[JohnRich 4]

Another visitor to the air show was the Coast Guard, with one of their Dolphin helicopters.

Photos:
1: The chopper.
2: The cockpit.
3: Tom tries to sneak aboard for a stowaway jump while the pilot is distracted.
4: A practice basket rescue.

They demonstrated some very adept flying, including going backwards and sideways. One of the pilots was a friend of a friend: a former Marine pilot who changed over to the Coast Guard.

[JohnRich 4]

The goofy T-shirt.

The three teams are always designated a patriotic "red", "white" and "blue" for the team names. So the T-shirts handed out for the event, paid for by sponsers, are made in those colors. However, this year the "white" team ended up with these yellow & orange tie-dye t-shirts. The sponsor was Scheppe's dairy, and this was apparently the t-shirt used for their hot-air balloon crews. So it has a cow on the front with a quart of milk, and "Moo Crew" on the back. Consequently, our exit chant was changed from "Ready, Set, Go!" to "Ready, Set, Moo!" They are neat shirts, actually, it's just a shame there wasn't something about skydiving on them.

Photo 1: T-shirt front, modeled by an anonymous sexy woman.
Photo 2: Moo Crew back side.

[SARLDO 0]

The '18 is Navy, the Airforce allows the Navy to use the Star and bars on their aircraft (Navy includes Marines).

BTW... Yes the F-18 is Navy and no, the "Stars and Bars" is not used by permission of the Air Force (Naval aviation was around, and using the USA markings on aircraft, way before the Army Air Corps became the USAF). The subdued markings referred to are used on all tactical paint scemes and reduces (by the paint used) the IR signature of the aircraft.

That's it for the lesson of the day...

Fly Navy!

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest" ~Samuel Clemens

MB#4300
Dudeist Skydiver #68

[Eule 0]

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The next day, we got to witness it taking off - it's hard to imagine something that huge, actually flying.

So did you ask the pilot about a jump ticket?

This says that the payload is 150,000 kg and that the usable floor area is 230 m^2. Hmm... with an FAA-spec 82 kg jumper and a guessed 13 kg rig for 95 kg per jumper, that's you and 1,577 of your closest friends on the jump. But you'll have to stand pretty close together - each one of you gets 0.146 m^2, or a square about 38 cm (15") on a side. You'll all need oxygen as well.

Thanks for the report!

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[airgord 1]

Aww man! Somebody always has to come on and ruin my BS with facts!
Ooookay, Navy had it first, Airforce borrowed it later.

[JohnRich 4]

The Saturday night party is a big attraction for this event. It's always fun to hang out at the pool with your friends, old and new.

One feature of the party is "the booze luge". This consists of a huge chunk of ice, mounted on a wood frame at a sloped angle. Using a manly tool like a chainsaw, a couple of deep grooves are carved into the surface. The bartender stands at the high end and pours a favorite libation into the grooves, while patrons kneel at the lower end with their mouths on the groove's exit point, and drink the ice cold beverage as it reaches them.

Photo 1: The overview
Photo 2: Look Ma, no hands!
Photo 3: Tandem luge

[JohnRich 4]

My last photos:

1) A hot babe & hot-air balloons.
(She wishes to have her privacy.)

2) Hot skydives. This photo is a bit low-quality, and from a previous year, but gives you an idea of what goes on. The entire NASA facility can be seen under the top portion of the 22-way formation. The giant arrow on the ground is an old concrete blast pad where they used to test rocket engines.

[Brains 2]

Good pics John, i see that Tony Nolan made it down there again this year. From out of state no less.

Never look down on someone, unless they are going down on you.

[JohnRich 4]

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Good pics John, i see that Tony Nolan made it down there again this year. From out of state no less.

Is that the guy from Tennessee, in the luge photos?

He almost got the "furthest traveled" award, but someone else came all the way from Belize, in Central America!

[Brains 2]

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Is that the guy from Tennessee, in the luge photos?

That would be him. He moved to TN a year or so ago. He used to jump in San Marcos for what seems like forever, then he moved. He shot video on my first tandem.

Never look down on someone, unless they are going down on you.

[Luminous 0]

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Well, the "competition" kind of fell through. Team "blue" didn't get their first jump done because of thunderstorms that moved through. And by the time the storms finished, we switched to a fun-jump format. So there really wasn't any valid competition.

But the Blue team did get to do their 1st round jump Sunday, and were declared the official winners.

Grrrrrr....

Oh well.. Next year.

'In an insane society a sane person seems insane.' Mr. Spock