15 years later the website is going strong with thousands of hits every month, I have become a pilot and I have my own hot air balloon.
I couldn’t let 15 years go by without celebrating it, so I have 2 things to celebrate. I have had some limited edition 15th Anniversary pin badges made – these are available for £5 including postage within the UK. Please use the Contact Us page to enquire about them.

Secondly, I am going to be planning a bit of a get together. It will be on the weekend of the 14th and 15th July and will be in the South West of the UK, near to Bristol. The exact location is yet to be decided but please check our Facebook page as I have created an event for this. If you have a balloon, bring it along, if you don’t, then come along anyway. I want to get as many people together to help celebrate this!

The plan is to have a flyout on the Saturday evening, followed then by a big BBQ and lots of drink! If the weather isn’t any good for flying then we will just have the BBQ and lots to drink! Bring some food, bring some drink and bring a balloon if you have one! I will try and arrange for camping on site so it will be easier for everyone. All information will be updated on the Facebook page so please check there.

Lets make this year a good one!

Limited Edition Pin Badge

BWS Hot Air Balloon

This year Phil’s Balloons has been asked to take over the flying of the BWS Security Systems hot air balloon for the next year. Phil Hooper will be teaming up with Cash4Cars balloon team pilot Matt Wiltshire to fly the balloon over the skies of the South West whilst previous pilot, John Morge, is busy starting a family.

We both plan to get the balloon in the air as much as we can and of course we will be at the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta. If you see us out in the field then please come and say hello, come and get involved, help us set the balloon up, or if we land in a field near you, then bring us a nice cup of tea (white, no sugar please!).

We have set up a Facebook page, which you can find my clicking here. We will update with launch locations, every time we fly, photos, videos and maybe something else! Like the page to find out what!

We also have twitter, and you can follow us @bwsballoonteam. Again, this will be up to date info from the field as and when we fly.

Both myself and Matt would like to thank Derek Maltby and Chris Jenkins for the opportunity of flying their balloon and we hope to do you proud!

Hopefully they will not be offline for too long and I’m sorry if this upsets you!

Fuel tanks indoors overnight

Well it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything in here! We last flew on the 2nd October 2011 and then the weather decided to go against us and stopped us flying all through the winter! Every week I would check the weather to see if it would be flyable at the weekend, but each week it turned out that it would be unflyable! Finally… 4 months later… there looked like a flyable weekend – hurrah!

We decided that we would go out nice and early as it was due to be snowing later that morning and the wind to be increasing. Also, due to the cold I would bring the fuel tanks into the house overnight so that they could keep warm and we would get good pressure for the flight!

Inflating G-BOOB

The alarm went off really early and it was really cold, I had that thought of “what am I doing!?!” A couple of snoozes on the alarm later I got up and loaded the fuel tanks into the van and set off to pick up the crew.

We arrived at the launch site in Bath, where we met another balloon team. It was just becoming light but we had plenty of time, so we took our time in getting things ready and remembering what went where seeing as it had been a while since we had all been out! It was about -4 degrees celcius so it also gave us a chance to warm up!
I inflated and took off at 8:05am and drifted slowly back towards Bristol – not ideal but I knew from the weather forecast that the wind higher up would take us more towards the north.

We went up to about 1000ft and we did get a slight change in direction, but not much. The other balloon team decided to land. We flew on and followed the edge of Bristol towards the North and as we got further North I decided to go up much higher and see if there

Packing away after a great flight

would be any direction change further up. We went up to a maximum height of 3,700ft and got a change in direction of just over 90 degrees! We were now going directly East! The temperature had now dropped to about -10 degrees celius at the height!

We carried on as we could see there was a common on the edge of the village of Yate, I decended and we suddenly increased in speed to around 18kts! We weren’t going to land on the common at this speed as by the time we got down to the right height we had already flown over the far edge of the common.
We had plenty of fuel so I wasn’t worried, we just carried on at a few hundred feet until we came across a nice big field with a gate at the side of the road. I just brushed the tree as I came in to land and once down, Ian got out and towed me towards the gate.

John, who was following in the van, was only just down the road so we started to pack away and soon warmed up, almost to the point of taking my coat off! Once everything was back in the van it was on to find some breakfast, and a Weatherspoons pub in Kingswood did the trick nicely.

Thank you to both Ian and John for coming out in such cold conditions. I had gread fun and the video turned out really well (you can see this on the video page).

The view from 3,700ft over Yate

The Bristol International Balloon Fiesta has passed us for another year, this time with more success than last year. The Phil’s Balloons team enjoyed 3 flights over the weekend. This was a surprise to most people as the forecast for the weekend at the start of the week was looking very poor, with high winds and rain. Luckily we didn’t see any of this and although the start of the weekend was a bit iffy, the middle was certainly great.

Although the decision from the organisers was that of “good to fly” on Friday morning, I actually decided against it – along with many others I must add. There was very low cloud and it was due to start raining soon. There were around 60 or so balloons that did fly though, and I’m sure they all had lovely flights. I tend to make my decisions based on if I was in the launchsite on my own, with no other balloons (or even a fiesta) around, if that decision to fly would be no, then it will still be a no at a balloon meet, regardless of how many balloons around me are taking off. Luckily my crew see this as a good way of thinking and we managed to enjoy a bacon roll and a cup of tea whilst watching some balloons flying!

Our first flight was to be Friday evening and it was such a great flight, although short. We took off and flew low over the crowd, and continued to fly low over the top end of Ashton Court. We took off in the middle of all the balloons so could see the balloons ahead of us heading straight towards Durdham Downs, so we did exactly that. We flew over the Avon Gorge, the Clifton Suspension Bridge and then low over Clifton to give us the direction towards Durdham Downs. We landed amongst many other balloons and the retrieve crew were right there to help us pack away – we then enjoyed a nice beer whilst watching other balloons landing around us.

Our next flight was to be Saturday evening as the morning was cancelled. It was quite windy so I decided to watch a few balloons first to see what the direction was and how fast they were actually travelling. Thankfully it wasn’t as windy as I thought and the direction was straight across Bristol. As it was the night glow that evening, I decided that it was going to be a short flight. We only flew for 30 minutes but it was a great flight, we landed in Victoria Park in Bedminster – with a big bump! I do have this on video too and it will be uploaded to the website soon.

Sunday morning was to be our last flight and I decided to fly one of the events team. They work very hard over the weekend so I think a balloon flight for one of them is a great way to say thank you! We flew right across Bristol and landed in Mangotsfield on a sports pitch some 45 minutes later.

That was the end of flying for us at the Balloon Fiesta and we look forward to attending again next year!

Bristol International Balloon Fiesta 2011

We all met on College Green in Bristol at 5am sharp this morning, there was a very small window of good weather for us to be able to do the press launch for the Balloon Fiesta.

I was due to fly in the Bristol University balloon but this changed on site due to lack of passengers in another balloon. This meant I was now to fly in the Jaguar balloon with Rich Allen and one of the official Fiesta photographers, Jake.

Jake was a little nervous as he had never flown before and mentioned that he didn’t like heights! This could be interesting!
We inflated and got the balloon upright and then the usual waiting around for all balloons to be in a position ready to launch and making sure all press were ready for filming and photos.
The all clear was given and we launched at arounf 6am. A nice flight out over the city with most balloons landing in Eastville Park, however we didn’t come down low enough, early enough to be able to catch the right wind to take us towards it so we flew on.

We saw ahead the field that most balloons landed in last year, alongside the M32! And that’s where we landed.

It was a great flight and my thanks to Rich for letting me on board! Jake actually enjoyed his flight and was very calm throughout. Hopefully he got some better photos than I did!

Bristol International Balloon Fiesta Press Launch 2011

Thursday evening saw me jumping on board with Craig Thompson and Alli Dunnington in the Sky Demo balloon. We took off from Ashton Court and landed in Chelwood after 45 minutes. Keeping low to try and avoid going towards the airport we flew right over Pensford and landed the otherside of the road to a Scout camp.

Friday evening was better in the sense that I hadn’t even planned to fly, I just went to Ashton Court just get some photos of some friends that were flying. I was chatting along and got asked if I wanted to have a flight, so of course I said yes! We flew right over Bristol and landed in Keynsham Rugby Club after 45 minutes.

Saturday morning was probably the most enjoyable out of the lot though. We took off from the Maize field just outside of bath and landed at the now old Cadbury’s chocolate factory in Keynsham after 1 hour and 10 minutes. I even flew someone for their birthday!

Sunday morning saw another early start but this time at Ashton Court. Along with a few others we drifted slowly over Bristol, flying close enough to Bailey Balloons that I could talk with the pilot! Got some lovely photos!

We saw that a friend of ours had landed in The Netham in St George so I decided that we would go and land there as well. The winds died right down as we came in to land and I ended up tracking just along the trees! Typical! I had to get the drop line connected on and had one of the crew from the other balloon team to pull us into the field! 1 other balloon also followed us in to The Netham.

I decided not to fly on Sunday evening as I was extremely tired, however I still went over to the Maize field and helped a number of balloons launch. But it meant I could get back home at a decent hour and still catch up on my sleep!!

One of the many photos taken

Unfortunately it meant that realistically there was not enough time to get to another launch site. But all was not lost, we were not on our own with not flying. Tim Dudman brought his hopper along so we all decided to go to the big field in Ashton Court where the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta is held and have a play around in the hopper!

I’ve never flown a hopper before so it was something very different than flying in a basket! For those that don’t know, a hopper is a one person balloon without a basket, you just have a little seat and your legs dangle beneath you! Sounds scary but it is good fun!

Go and take a look in the gallery at the photos that were kindly taken by crew Matt Cleaves

Pilot Phil Hooper (me!) getting strapped into the hopper seat!

We look forward to attending again if the event is held next year. A full set of photos can been seen via the Gallery page.

Tiverton Balloon Festival

All the the film crew, make up, lighting, sound guys and techies turned up around 8:30am and started to get all their equipment set up whilst we inflated the balloon. Adjustments were made to the length of the ropes we were tethered to and filming started.

It all took around an hour and a half to get all the shots that they needed to get in front of the big country house. All in all it was a really good morning and we met some great people from the production crew that came all the way from California!

On Set With Jane Seymour