Category: Campgrounds

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, NM – Friday October 11, 2019

Today’s picture was taken by Don Clapp, he has more amazing photos over on his Facebook page..

This morning was a good example of the difficulties of getting a balloon off the ground. The envelope was standing, John was in the basket with Bruce, when a gust of air came through the north end of the field on a diagonal line. This gust was maybe 100 wide and took out 5 or 6 balloons including ours.

One balloon was blown off the ground while still tethered to his pickup. Another dozen balloons who had their envelopes laying out on the ground put them back in the bag and called it a day.

One of the 1 inch round plastic supports which hold up the burner while the balloon is on the ground was broken off. Bruce had to go to Cameron balloon tent to have the end stuck that was in the basket drilled out and bought a new support. While he was there a special shapes balloon came in for a new set of four supports. All four of his got broken off.

Several hundred balloons went up today. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. If we had been five minutes ahead of today’s time table we would have flown.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, NM – Wednesday October 9, 2019

Thank you Bruce Skach balloon ZROZRO7 – my first balloon ride. In a couple of days I will get more pictures and videos up on the website.
 Again, Thanks Bruce it was amazing!!!

See the October 2019 Video page to watch the first video I took during the flight. Videos are on their own page because of their size. For people living on the road data has to be watched every day. The video is 25 megs long and is the October 09, 2019 section.
Video Page

Here are the pictures I took during the flight. I wanted to enjoy the flight and not spend the whole time taking pictures and videos.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, NM – Tuesday October 8, 2019

We didn’t fly again today. We were getting ready to stand the balloon/envelope up this morning and when he checked the pressure in his propane tanks they were right on the edge of the safety margin. The air temp when I left the coach was 53 degrees. This should have been warm enough for him to have over 50 lbs of pressure but was at 48-50 lbs. He said any place else he would have flown but with all the balloons in the sky here he wanted more pressure so he was sure he would have heat if he needed it. With the current propane pressure the balloon would react slowly.

Jean took these pictures:

On the way back from the launch field I stopped to help a balloon land. It turned out to be a balloon from Kenya we had seen on the news the other night. I recognized his voice/accent so I asked him if he had been on the news this week, he said yes. Really nice guy this is his first Fiesta and seemed pleased with all the help he gets.

When I got back to the coach Jean showed me the pictures she had taken this morning and saw this picture of the balloon I had just helped land.

The red line is pointing at me as I was standing holding down the balloon talking to the pilot ( I’m really good at providing weight to hold down a balloon).

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, NM – Monday October 7, 2019

Beautiful sunny morning.

DRAFT – When I trying to write this the internet is so slow I cannot do much an anything. I’ll post this from my computer and try to edit it from my I pad. (1/07/2019 10:11 a.m.)

  • This balloon landed in the Mayor’s empty parking lot.

Jean took these pictures:

I am going to try and place videos on a separate page.

October 2019 Video Page

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, NM Saturday October 5, 2019

The Balloon Fiesta solved the problem of the morning RV Lot buses getting lost in the RV Lot area, we didn’t have any buses. The buses are scheduled to start running at 5:00 a.m., Jean said she heard the first bus at 7:00 a.m. I needed to be at the launch field at 6:00 a.m. at launch square T-6. The neighbor and I walked, fitbit says it is 1.88 miles.

Not many balloons launched this morning, 3/4 of the dawn patrol went up and they all went north onto the reservation and then the fog move onto the launch field.

Here are some pictures from today, since I was going to the field to help Bruce launch his balloon I did not take DSLR these pictures are from my pocket camera I carry to take fish pictures.

  • This is Bruce’s new to him chase vehicle, his car got totaled this year. The trailer is a borrowed because his balloon was stolen in July, got most of it back in August but the trailer was also totaled.

This is my first try at video:

This is our site now that everybody has moved in, we are on one of the main roads.

Yesterday we have a thunderstorm come though the area. This is the water mark on a tow vehicle two sites down from us.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, NM – Friday October 4, 2019

I think the blog is caught up from the time we did not have internet.

Wednesday September 11, 2019 to Wednesday September 25, 2019 our time fishing the San Juan River. The fishing summary is on September 25.

9/27 added driving pictures, 9/28, 9/29, 9/30

Today was “Balloons Aloft” in Albuquerque. Pilots go out to many of area schools and set up balloons to show the kids how a hot air balloon works.

We didn’t get to put up our balloon, balloons do not like thunderstorms.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, NM – Wednesday October 2, 2019

We are here for the fourth year.

Today’s drive was 68 miles.

We are parked in a different area and much worst then last year. We started out of level from side to side by 6 inches. With blocks we get from the parking volunteers we got to level. One of the parking volunteers gave me a ride back to the front registration area where they had the blocks. They said one block was $1.00 if I took 15 ( half of what they had) they were free. Sooner they were gone the less they had to deal with.

Here is where we are this year.

The red dot is about where we were last year.

Last week on the local news the mayor was talking about what a great thing he had done by adding more parking at the launch field.

This is the additional launch field parking. The city took this level area and made it car parking.

Oh well.

On to the generator problem. The Cummins guy got here at 12:30 and explained what he believed happened. Bottom line he thinks the generator is just fine.

Here is what he said happened. The error code is #14, OVERFREQUENCY FAULT. When the generator was running and I shut off both A/C units at the same time while operating at 60Hz the generator can spike to over 90Hz. Any time the generator goes over the 60Hz (said what the exact tolerance is but I forgot) for 6 seconds the generator will shuts down. He said to shut down one A/C at a time to help the generator stay stable at 60Hz. He also said it is best to let the generator run for for 20-30 minutes after running it under a load to let it cool down. We had a group of 8 guys setting around waiting for the technician to arrive and hung around and answered every bodies questions. Cummins is here for the fiesta to do service and answer questions.

Sky City, NM – October 1, 2019

We are on our way to Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. A long way today 310 miles of wind

We are at this RV Park so we can dump and fill with water. In site 25.

It was a struggle to find propane today. First place was an RV Park where nobody would come to the office, next place the kid could not figure out how to hook up the propane hose to our tank. A lot of places had locations we could not get into. The next place Amerigas in Grants, NM did not exist. Made some wrong turns drove out of town looking for a place to turn around ended up back in town and drove by a propane place. Why filled us up and now we are ready for Fiesta. Leave early in the morning, get gas at Flying J on west side of Albuquerque. Then on to the South RV lot at Balloon Fiesta and our 12:00 appointment for Cummins to scan the generator and hopefully find what is wrong with an easy fix.