This morning we received the email that all balloonists want to receive! That’s the email from the organisers of the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta to say that our application to attend this year’s Fiesta has been confirmed!

So you will see us in the skies over the busy August weekend! Yay!

Bristol International Balloon Fiesta 2011

Phil’s Balloons was kindly asked by the lovely folk over at Spirit Balloons to go along to the London Marathon 2011 and help with the start line balloon tether of their King Sturge Balloon. We were on site for 5:30am and started to tether from around 8:30am right until the last runner crossed the start line!

Conditions were perfect to make an easy life and to get some great video and photos. Video will be processed as soon as possible and the photos can now be seen online.

London Marathon 2011

On the 7th April 2011 Phil’s Balloons took to the skies amongst 49 other balloons in Kent. The aim was to get to France…and we did! Hurrah!

This was by far one of the best experiences I have had during all the years I have been ballooning and I will upload a full report on this sometime during the next week.

The feeling of flying out to sea is very strange!! A whole bunch of photos can now been seen on the gallery and there will certainly be some video to follow as well!

Cross Channel 2011

This morning we had planned to take to the skies for our first flight of 2011 and the first time since October! The weather really has been against us over the winter.

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t with us this morning either, low cloud was in the skies this morning which scuppered our flying plans. However, we took the time to get the balloon out and inflate it to give everything a quick check and make sure there were no issues.

The wind soon picked up so we were unable to play around for long, but we did manage to get some nice photos from the inside of the envelope whilst we were inflating thanks to crew Matt Cleaves!

We also have a little video that is being worked on at the moment and should be uploaded very soon!

The entry forms for the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta are now available, Phil’s Balloons has now completed the forms and submitted them back to the organisers.

We will hopefully hear back in the next couple of months to find out if we have been chosen to attend or not! Fingers crossed!!

I have now managed to get Live Tracking working on the website!

I took to the skies at 4pm on Thursday 14th October 2010 with the aim to test out the live tracking. Itwas all a bit rushed and I did post it on Facebook that the testing was going to take place.

I had a text halfway through the flight to say that it was working successfully! Great news. There will soon be a page to show the live tracking map, this will show a Google Map and will update every 4 minutes or so with a dot to show exactly where we are, when we are exactly at that point! How cool!

I will also have a page to show all the old tracks, this will be a Google Map track and also a track over an Ordnace Survey Map as well.

The Facebook page can be found by clicking HERE and this is where I will be updating to say that we will be going flying and to watch the tracking page. The tracking page will be updated as well to say that it will be live within the next couple of hours or so. Hopefully I will be doing this on all of the flights in the future!

Below you can see what the Live Tracking actually looks like, very simple. This is our flight from the 14th and it’s the saved track after the flight. You are able to click on each yellow dot to see how high we were, what direction we were travelling in and how fast we were going too!

Live Tracking Map

Well yesterday morning started off a little pessimistic as the forecast winds were due to be quite high.

In flight camera

2 local commercial companies had cancelled their flights becuase of the high winds! However we went off to a launch field just on the outskirts of Bath, opposite the Globe Pub. We let off a small helium filled balloon to give us an indication of what the wind was due to be doing once we took off, and thankfully the winds seemed much lower than predicted.

We set up and launched at 0725 and headed south, within 5 minutes I had reached my 50th flying hour which obviously put a smile on my face! We continued to fly south, over Englishcombe and seing Priston off to our right.

I decided that it was time to land so came down low to make an approach to a field that I wasn’t quite sure if it had been sown or not yet. I continued to fly low until I could see exactly what it was, eventually seeing that it had been sown I decided that I would brush the top of a hedge and continue flying until I found a suitable landing site. Unforutnately the hedge was more like a brick wall and we didn’t exactly brush through it but hit it and swang like a pendulum!

Eventually we stopped swinging around and continued to fly low over a small forrest towards a nice big cut crop field just to the other side. I flew low across the field to the top where we eventually landed and deflated the balloon. The lovely game keeper and landowner came over to us and gave directions on the best way to get into the field. Dropped the crew off on the way home and then went to breakfast with a friend that also launched from the same field as us. A great way to spend a Saturday morning!

Thumbs up for 50 hours!

The Grass Roots balloon meet has been called on so Phil’s Balloons will be in attendance.

We hope to fly as much as possible, and if it’s not flyable then we will probably be at the bar!

If you see us, please do say hello

We have just arrived back home after a nice time in Tavistock at the Westcountry Balloon Fiesta 2010. We were helping with team BWS this year and have just uploaded a whole bunch of photos to the website! Go and see!

Well we finally managed to fly Boob at the Northampton Balloon Festival this weekend. We were one of 28 balloons that flew on Sunday morning and landed in a place called Harold! We also took part in the basket only night glow on Saturday evening.

Thanks to everyone that made it such a great weekend. Don’t forget our competition! Upload any photo of G-BOOB taken this year and you can win a FREE balloon flight!