Smooth flying

Yesterday the sailing was bad. Still not sure what went wrong, but just a few hours later, the flying was very mooth, and somehow... it was related to the Fizz Cup too...

Smooth flying

So, how did I end up in a hot air balloon, you might ask... Easy enough: At Tradewinds most people  share an interest for building and sailing boats. Turns out Liv, the commodore, has a soft spot for (identified) flying objects. Aka planes and airships.

Balloon show at Tradewinds

This is probably how it came to be that after the live-aboard boat show, there is an airship show going on. The shot above is me heating up the balloon before "going to sea" in it. Never did this in RL, so I am on uncharted grounds here.

Ready for take off

So, - ready for takeoff? Let's see what this balloon can do. Push the pgup key, and the burner bursts into a roaring flame right above my head. I quickly shut it down and the balloon silently lifts and begins to drift eastward towards the light house. This is nice, but uhm... where's the controls?

Controls?

Phew; The winds kinda blew me right south off light house. Good. Now, - never mind the controls. What comes up must go down, and this thing is no exception. If I wanted to spend the night sitting on that yellow buoy I could probably have done that, but I decided to start the burner again... 

Reckognize this?

Perhaps I burned a little too much fuel here, cause the balloon went up pretty fast and the next thing I looked at was this ugly bugger parked over the clubhouse. Anyone reckognize it? Luckily the wind was blowing me away from the beast...

A much better view

Ahh... much better... I wonder if I can hit the island out there... if not, I can always use a parachute. If I can find it in my backpack. Parachuting is fun, but this post here is about the airships... Let's get back to the show... Err... arrow keys don't work. Oh how weird: Typing help seemed to actually help. There is a hud with buttons for controlling the balloon. 

Steering west

This is too easy... I can just click west, and the balloon flies westward... here we are approaching the clubhouse again. Note the other (dark) balloon in the back. Ok, so we have a hefty controllable seabreeze at Tradewinds, hehe.

More balloons in the back

There's loads of airships at Tradewinds. Big, small, cute, ugly... any shape and form. Some are realistic, and others are completely cartoonic. Don't miss the show. It runs throughout November. And don't miss the Fizz Cup 2012 starting this weekend. Didn't file this under unboatly, because an airship is a ship, so this is a boatshow... with a twist.

Many more details on Tradewinds website