First Solo Flight

KB got his first solo flight Tuesday, September 7th. It was a very exciting night, but I was way nervous. Here we are getting things ready, he's checking over the balloon and making sure we are good to go.

There he goes, setting it up and getting ready.

Oh my, he's off! I was a WRECK. You can see Gary Sines in the background.

He flew for about 30 minutes, nice short flight with a fairly tight landing spot, but he landed it great. We were all there to catch him.

I will post pictures of the celebration later, it was a great day!!!

Flying in Brookfield

As with the past 5 years, we spent Labor Day weekend in Brookfield, MO at the Great Pershing Balloon Derby. This was the 34th year for this derby, and it's the longest running BFA competition in the US. We started the derby Saturday morning with a beautiful 4 part task from the launch field. Here are a few of our friends inflating for this beautiful flight. First we have Tim Graham in Still No Regrets, Andrew James in Godzilla, Matthew Riley in Cherry Bomb and Gary Whitby in Boomer.

What a beautiful sight. Here we see our friend Lynn McVay in Skydreamer (3rd balloon from left)

I love when all the balloon cluster together.

After a small incident Saturday evening at the glow, our friend Jim Wolters needed a balloon to fly, and we happened to have our system there and ready to go. Kenny got to fly with Jim for Sunday morning's competition. They scored 5th for the morning.

Here they are hovering over the target, making a great throw. After that, Kenny got to take over the burner and get his high speed landing in.

Unfortunately I was not there to see that very fast landing, I think he looked for the most remote field he could find to land.

The rest of the weekend ended up very windy and we were unable to get any more flights in, but we did have a great time. Looking forward to the 35th Great Pershing Balloon Derby when we will hopefully be able to enter our own balloon, with Kenny Jay as the pilot.

Congrats to Jeremy Rubin for his big win on this derby.

High Altitude Flight

Stacie, Gaige and Jesse came out to crew for Kenny's high altitude flight with Theron. I guess we need to get Gaige a Mai'Ken Dreams shirt, huh?

George Thomas and Gary Sines also flew that night, well, Adam Magee did too, but I didn't get him in this picture.

There he is, just a dot in the sky. He went up to approximately 4,300 feet. On the way down, they did a 'terminal decent' at about 1,400 feet per minute. This caused them to go into a spin. I'm sure glad I didn't see it!!! It was bad enough knowing how high he was going.

Busy busy week

I haven't had time to download pictures from the last week yet, we have been so very busy. We were in Brookfield, MO this past weekend at the 34th Annual Great Pershing Balloon Derby.

We started out crewing for our friend Lynn with Skydreamer, but ended up being fortunate enough to fly Mai'Ken Dreams Sunday morning. There was a bit of an 'incident' Saturday evening at the glow, when our friend Jim Wolters that flies the Missouri Lottery Balloon had a small mishap that caused damage to his envelope. He was doing well in the standings and wanted to fly Sunday morning, but didn't have an envelope. We were all lucky enough that we happened to have brought our system, so Jim and Kenny took off in Mai'Ken Dreams for the competition flight Sunday morning. Jim started out flying for the competition and placed 5th for the morning. As soon as that was done, he let Kenny take over the burner and continue to fly. Kenny got his high speed landing in!! He flew 16 miles in 41 minutes, they were a truckin' right along! He also found the most remote place to land, with the worse roads to get to him. Thanks to the GPS on his phone, and the GPS we had in the truck, Mom, Dad and I were finally able to locate him, in the valley of a CPR field. It was a very exciting day for the Mai'Ken Dreams crew. We didn't get any more flights in after that as the wind decided it wanted to blow 90 to nothin'.

Tuesday night Tim Graham signed Kenny off to do his solo flight and it was wonderful. He had a nice 30 minute flight with a perfect landing in a very tight spot. We were there to catch him and celebrate. Special thanks to Tim for all his help in Kenny's training. Also thanks to Mom and Dad, Stacie and Jesse and Brian for coming out to crew with us for his first solo. Adam was also there to meet us upon landing. We had a big celebration with Kenny wearing a bottle of champagne. Good thing we brought along an extra shirt!!

I will try to post pictures soon, as soon as I get rid of this poison ivy and get the darn yard mowed.

Soft landings and congratulations to my Love Dove on his first solo flight, along with many more to come.