Entree Components

It is important before we speak about components to understand that the "Aircraft" is the envelope itself. The basket, burner, tanks, e.t.c are all components. This can be demonstrated by the fact that you can swap baskets and tanks but the registration is still the same on the envelope.

Balloon

The fabric is the all important factor. I have spoken to many fabric suppliers and a couple of balloon manufacturers about their fabrics. The result is that I decided to go with a company called Gelvenor. They are located just outside Durban in South Africa, and have a specific line of balloon fabric called LCN 273 BK CH or CH 07 for a calendered finish. It goes at about US$3.85 per linear metre for first quality finish product. Second quality (usually uneven colour) goes for about US$1.90 per linear metre. tensile strength is the same on Seconds as on Firsts. So I went for a combination of firsts and seconds as they did not have enough seconds for my needs. To give you an idea I needed approximately 600 linear metres for this balloon.

Basket and Burner

I was given a Raven Rally II basket which has come from a balloon where the envelope is no longer airworthy. The basket is in good shape, especially for a 20 year old basket. The basket also came with the original HPII raven burner which is a fantastic burner with about 12 million BTU output. The basket uses aircraft grade aluminimum as the load bearing structure as opposed to in Australia, the more often seen suspension cable system. There were hundreds of these systems produced and were very popular in their home country of the USA. Basket dimensions are 1m * 1.1m

Tanks

I purchased 3 Worthington tanks from a friend of mine who was getting out of the sport for $300 each. My Plan is to manifold the tanks together to allow for easy access to all fuel in flight as the burner only has a single fuel input line, as do most of the burners produced by Aerostar (raven) and indeed, the super popular TBW 3 burner most commonly used on homebuilt balloons in the USA.