December 17, 2003
Flight of fantasy
Glenn Loomis students explore aviation inside hot air balloon
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Students at Glenn Loomis Elementary School took a trip in a hot air balloon last Wednesday - literally.
Removing shoes, they filed inside a partly-inflated hot air balloon billowing over the basketball nets and up to the ceiling of their gym. Sitting down by class, surrounded by brightly-colored nylon, they listened raptly as Carroll Teitsworth, owner of Liberty Balloon Company of Rochester, N.Y., described the features of the balloon and answered questions.
The dramatically colored balloon, kept inflated by four fans blowing into the opening, loomed around the children as Teitsworth talked.
"What surprised me was I never thought of a balloon that way before, that it could be so exciting," said Cassidy Taylor, a sixth-grade student at the school. "But there was so much to learn about balloon flying."
For fourth grader Jon Culp, seeing and touching were learning.
"I really liked how heavy it was and who strong it was," said Culp. "I thought if a bird could peck it, it would blow up."
Teitsworth's visit to the school was part of a month-long, school-wide educational focus on the history of aviation. Led by librarian Shar Bogard - who built a scale model of the Wright brothers' plane out of cardboard for the library - the effort featured games, reading, videos and the visit by Teitsworth.
In addition, an instructor with Northwestern Michigan College's aviation department stopped by to talk with students. Like the balloon introduction, this visit sparked lots of imaginations and provided yet another boost for Bogard's 'Take Flight and Read' initiative.
"By the time NMC flight instructor Mike Stokes left, they all wanted to be pilots," Bogard noted.
For Culp, the series of events all month helped solidify vision for the future.
"My favorite dream is flying, that is what I want to do," he declared.
The Liberty Balloon Company program did not go as planned Wednesday morning: bad weather canceled a tethered outdoors launch and moved the presentation into the gym. No problem for Teitsworth, a longtime balloonist, instructor and presenter, though some the school's teachers chosen at random to ascend in the basket might have been disappointed.
Bogard, however, saw a silver lining in the raining clouds:
"I think the kids learned more this way, getting to see it up close and go inside, instead of just watching teachers go up and come down," she noted.
Before inviting students into his balloon, Teitsworth first discussed the history of ballooning and distinguished between gas balloons filled with helium or hydrogen and hot-air balloons kept aloft by heated air. He noted that the first balloon few in France in 1783, 120 years before the Wright brothers' feat. This balloon was a hot-air balloon, a precursor to today's models.
"This balloon was mankind's first experience in flight and the heat to raise the balloon came from a fire on the ground," he said, adding that these early balloons were made of paper and were both fragile and flammable.
After discussing the training and licensing that go into being a balloon pilot, he talked about the steps of flying a hot-air balloon: pre-flight, launch, flight, and post flight.
Teitsworth also outlined how balloonists navigate around the skies. Hot-air balloonists raise and lower their craft by either heating or cooling the air in the balloon envelope. A propane burner fires jets of flame into the balloon cavity at temperatures around 4,400 degrees Fahrenheit, quickly heating and raising the balloon. Long ropes connect maneuvering vents in the balloon to the basket, allowing the pilot to dump heated air and lower the craft.
Gas balloon pilots adjust altitude by dumping ballast from sandbags. Teitsworth noted that even a handful of sand from one bag could affect height.
In addition to controlling altitude, balloonists must also learn to steer using wind currents at different altitudes. If a balloonist wants to head east during a flight, for example, he would raise or lower his balloon until he found a wind current blowing east. This wind would then carry the balloon in the desired direction.
"A balloon just goes wherever the wind takes it, when we take off, we don't know where we're going to land," he noted. "There are different layers of wind at different altitudes so to steer you just find a wind going in the direction you want."