Balloons Over Waikato Festival

Have you ever tried hot air ballooning?  If the answer is no then you need to try it sooner than later. It is basically the activity of flying hot air balloons and will provide you with an out of the world feeling. You will be able to experience an amazing quiet that in no way can be called eerie. In fact the quietness will be mind boggling in a good way. When in the hot air balloon you will not feel any movement as you move with the wind and you will be able to get a birds’ eye view on...Read Full Story

A Kongming lantern, the oldest type of hot air balloonThis 1818 technical illustration shows early balloon designs.A model of the Montgolfier brothers balloon at the London Science Museum The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying flight technology. On November 21, 1783, in Paris, France, the first manned flight was made by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes in a hot air balloon created by the Montgolfier brothers.A hot air balloon consists of a...Read Full Story

My parents recently returned from a touring holiday in Turkey and the highlight of their trip was a hot air balloon flight over the rocky landcape of Cappadocia. This area of Turkey is known for the volcanic rocks which have been eroded over the centuries into strangely shaped pillars known as fairy chimneys and carved out by the local people for their homes and churches. The early Christians hid here from Roman persecution, creating underground complexes and refuges in the hidden valleys...Read Full Story

As an on-going commitment to hot air ballooning, especially in the westcountry, Aerosaurus invited Dave Seagar-Thomas to come down to its Exeter base on Saturday to help increase safety on privately owned balloons by renewing their C of A’s (Certificate of Airworthiness). A C of A has to be carried out on a balloon every year or 100 hours it is in the sky. This check is very important and helps to ensure that hot air ballooning is kept as one of the safest air sports out there! Dave inspected...Read Full Story

With just a few weeks left of school, most of us aren't going to be redecorating the classroom. If you took everything down for testing, though, you might want a quick end of the year theme for a bulletin board just so you don't have to put it all back up again.How about hot air balloons?This is one of the happiest themes, but it can also be one of the most frustrating, because there are very few ready-made resources for it.Here's one: Eureka's "The Sky is Your Limit" banner.CTP has done...Read Full Story