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Ultralight Flying Adventures! Flight To 1st Annual Hot Air Balloon Festival
As we arrived, the event was just getting in full swing. As the flight of ultralights rounded the small hill at the entrance to the lake this view greeted us. Fabulous!!! The balloons were launching near the edge of the lake, then slowly drifting across the water and out towards the surrounding desert. As part of the balloon competition, each balloon tried to just barely touch the surface of the lake without getting the occupants wet ! That was fun to watch. Quite beautiful really.
Along the way, we flew past several hot air balloons that were in the process of landing and calling it a day. It made for a very interesting perspective in this photo. It's very hard to judge sizes in this picture. The hot air balloons are at least 5 times larger than the ultralight.
West Texas Airport was a very welcome sight when it finally came into view. Another great flying day, another great flying adventure!
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This was a very special day for the West Texas Airport ultralight flying club, an ad hoc group of ultralight pilots that simply enjoyed flying together and sharing flying experiences. This particular weekend had been anticipated for several weeks as the group had been invited to fly-in to the 1st Annual Hot Air Balloon Festival being held at Mountain Shadow Lakes. The lake was about a 15 minute flight one-way and everyone that was planning to go had taken a day off from work to prep their ultralights for the cross country flight.
We got an idea of just how big this was going to be as we flew out to the lake. The only road leading to Mountain Shadow Lakes was bumper to bumper cars for mile after mile after mile. We sure were glad we were flying to the lake that morning.
Further out over the desert, the balloons were gathering in a large group for a simultaneous launch. What an incredible sight! The size of the desert dwarfs the immense size of the hot air balloons.
We landed and grouped our planes and were soon surrounded by hundreds of curious festival goers. We spent quite a bit of time explaining about ultralights and their requirements and as the late morning thermals began to build, we lined up and took off one after to the other (to a line of people applauding), grouped up into formation and headed for home.
The 20 minute flight home got bumpier and bumpier with the rising desert thermals and you could see the single surface winged ultralights bobbing up and down and rocking side to side in the choppy air. My double surface wing Cobra pretty much ignored most of the small bumps but from time to time, would zoom upward in a rising thermal or suddenly drop as I flew into sinking air near a thermal.
