Lawn chair balloonists land with a big thud
Source: Agencies |
July 16, 2012, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A GAS station owner and an Iraqi adventurer trying to fly from Oregon to Montana in tandem lawn chairs suspended from party balloons made a hard landing after having to abort their flight due to thunderstorms.
Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta were about seven hours into their flight on Saturday when they were forced to descend, coming down near a reservoir about 48 kilometers east of their starting point. But after they scrambled out of the contraption, it floated up again, flight organizer Mark Knowles said.
"They came down hard," Knowles said. "The craft went back up. It's sitting up in the sky right above us."
Earlier, about 90 volunteers and several hundred onlookers counted down and then cheered as the pair lifted off from Couch's Shell gas station.
Anybody can do it
"The interesting thing is, anybody can do this," said Couch, the veteran of several lawn chair balloon flights.
Lafta, a mountain climber and sky diver, said he had shared Couch's childhood dream of floating like a cloud. He sent Couch an e-mail two winters ago after reading about earlier flights.
"I want to inspire Iraqis and say we need to defeat terrorists," Lafta said. "We don't need just an Army. We need ideology and to just have fun."
Volunteers filled 350 1.5-meter diameter balloons with helium and tied them to Couch's homemade tandem lawn chair rig. The rig included 360 kilograms of ballast - red Kool-Aid in 150-liter barrels. They also had GPS, navigation gear, satellite phone, oxygen, radios, eight cameras, parachutes and two Red Ryder BB rifles and a pair of blowguns to shoot the balloons to return to Earth.
Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta were about seven hours into their flight on Saturday when they were forced to descend, coming down near a reservoir about 48 kilometers east of their starting point. But after they scrambled out of the contraption, it floated up again, flight organizer Mark Knowles said.
"They came down hard," Knowles said. "The craft went back up. It's sitting up in the sky right above us."
Earlier, about 90 volunteers and several hundred onlookers counted down and then cheered as the pair lifted off from Couch's Shell gas station.
Anybody can do it
"The interesting thing is, anybody can do this," said Couch, the veteran of several lawn chair balloon flights.
Lafta, a mountain climber and sky diver, said he had shared Couch's childhood dream of floating like a cloud. He sent Couch an e-mail two winters ago after reading about earlier flights.
"I want to inspire Iraqis and say we need to defeat terrorists," Lafta said. "We don't need just an Army. We need ideology and to just have fun."
Volunteers filled 350 1.5-meter diameter balloons with helium and tied them to Couch's homemade tandem lawn chair rig. The rig included 360 kilograms of ballast - red Kool-Aid in 150-liter barrels. They also had GPS, navigation gear, satellite phone, oxygen, radios, eight cameras, parachutes and two Red Ryder BB rifles and a pair of blowguns to shoot the balloons to return to Earth.
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