Hot Air Balloon Flight Record - 20-22Sep2023
Rosa Lee and Chad | Tonya

50th Adirondack Balloon Festival

With hurricane Ophelia coming up the east coast, the weather forecast for the weekend has been "variable". For Friday evening, the sky was clear and the winds dropped of to nothing, literally. Took off from the RV area and moved slowly W into the woods. Then spent the remainder of the flight finding slow tracks NE to NW, trying to move off the trees and onto one of the runways. Other balloons down low were trying to clear the woods to the west. Finally moved NW over the runway 12. Dropping from 3000 feet I moved furthing NW of the runway, but turned back SE down low. North side was wet so I drifed to the south side of the runway before landing...at sunset.

Saturday morning is the FIRST Dawn Patrol at the Adirondack Balloon Festival with 5 balloons. The direction is south which isn't the best so we wanted to delay closer to sunrise. We all took off in a line, moving slowly south. One balloon landed in the RV area and the rest of us continued on. I was following Rick, slightly west of his track but not enough to get into the Walmart parking lot. We both headed toward the old Kmart now U-Haul parking lot for a calm and dry landing.

We grabbed the drop line for a later balloon that wanted into the same parking lot, and watched other balloons pass by quickly. I packed up and drove back to the RV area while considering another flight. When we arrived we found most main field balloons had flown across the airport and landed at the RVs.

Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning had rain in the area and 33kt winds at 3000ft so no flights.

Timelapse Video:

• Friday PM, Rosa Lee and Chad
• Saturday AM, Tonya on Dawn Patrol