Afternoon Hopper Flight – 16th July 2018

After a somewhat busy morning flying 40 passengers in the valley we spotted that the forecast showed a considerable drop in winds for the afternoon which may provide the chance for a rare afternoon flight. The Hunter Valley was very busy being school holidays along with hosting a cheese festival and Snow Time in the Gardens running over the weekend. We had a quick chat and agreed we would head home for a few hours rest before meeting back at the shed at 3pm to prepare to equipment and search for a suitable launch site.

Winds at this time were a lot stronger than forecast however provided a very good direction to our larger landing fields. We continued to monitor BOM winds and noticed that the southerly cold change had moved towards the south of the valley and indicated that it would soon cool off and calm the winds. After a short drive to our intended landing site we observed near calm conditions and proceed back to the north of the valley before deciding a launch site in the Harrigan’s Irish pub carpark.

During the space of 10 mins the winds dropped to near calm on the surface and gave us a chance to quickly inflate in front of a bank of onlookers who had appeared from the pub and hotel. After launch we drifted over the Hunter Valley Gardens with a crowd of screaming children below who were more than delighted to see 2 hot air balloons flying above. Our track was straight in line for our landing fields just above the treetops at about 5 knots. We maintained this track and height for the whole flight as we had plenty of onlookers below stopping to get photos and its always fun to cruise low especially for me in the hopper and my feet dangling.

Approaching our landing field, we noticed a lovely cold change and dropping in towards the ground we slowed into the calm surface inversion before touching down. Our crew were not far behind grabbing a few photos before a quick pack up as the sunset in the distance.

A celebration beer at the farm complimented what was a busy and adventure filled afternoon.