Balloon Fiesta Part 3 - The Chase Crew

The Crew

We volunteered to crew for a pilot on a part time basis (e.g., not every day).  With our late arrival it worked out that we helped with about half of the launches.  There were several days where the weather and winds did not cooperate.  Sometimes, our balloon was set up and inflated but the launch was scrubbed. In most cases pilots don't like to launch if the wind speed at landing is anything more than 5mph.  The higher wind speed makes landing really tricky and potentially dangerous.

Here are a kind of assortment of photos from our days participating as the balloon crew.

I was invited to ride on one of the days (Ina chickened out).  At the bottom of this post is some video of the launch and ride.

Working the Crown during inflation.