Entree concept

WHY? that is the most common question I get when I explain that I am building my own balloon. This is closely followed by " no way I will fly with you!".

A long time ago I thought about building my own balloon and I got the opportunity to do almost that. I say almost, because it was a rebuild of a friends balloon. My payment was that I could fly it until it was sold, and this was good because I wanted to compete at the National Championships that year. It was a 2/3 rebuild of the envelope and taught me a lot about myself and about the balloon.

Since then I have always though it would be fun to do it all from scratch. The reality of my situation is that I am unlikely to get the $30,000 dollars needed for a new balloon from a manufacturer so I decided building one was the alternative.

I spent about 200 hours researching different design ideas, materials, getting advice from manufacturers, CASA (equivilant of the FAA in the US), equipment and invaluable assistance from all those who said I would never do it. They have been proved wrong :)

This balloon is the first multi person homebuilt balloon to be constructed under the Amateur built experimental class here in Australia. This class has been available since 1998 legislation changes. This works on the 51% build rule similar to that in the USA. Because it is the first it was little harder to get all the necessary approvals because it was unknown concept to our CASA. I envy those Americans of you who have so many of these behind you with which to lobby your inspectors.

This is also the reason I decided to over engineer the balloon. If it is super safe then there should be a lot less problems in approvals. Have a look around the website and any ideas or help or encouragement you feel like offering please email me on this address.

Remember, ballooning is s'posed to be fun.