Pilots: Why do balloons “fall” and land in traffic rings? The | sports

The arm or leg is stretched more often to the ground than in a balloon

Speaking of balloon drop, G. Leškevičius uses the term “drop” used by pilots, which means that the pilot will not heat the air dome for some time or heat it with less intensity.

“The balloons have fallen, fall and fall all the time. I sometimes use the term ‘prakrisim’ for passengers. They scare them, even though it is a perfectly normal term among pilots. It means” allowing the balloon to come down during a time, “said the portal. 15 minutes explained the interlocutor, best known to many as a presenter of television programs and events, participant in various musical projects, singer.

Although aviation has been actively practiced in Lithuania for three good decades, only in recent years has the number of social media entries and reports of balloon-related incidents increased.

“A threatening balloon landing”, “a balloon landed in an emergency”, “the balloon could have landed due to an explosion”, “it was seen to have burst at the top”, such comments accompany photos or videos of close people.

According to G. Leškevičius, similar incidents have “increased” due to the increase in information dissemination channels, the popularity of social media, and everyone can film an unusually flying or landing balloon on their mobile phone.

“It would be a good comparison to an egg that breaks when dropped. The balloon is flying people, so if that happened to it, there would be plenty of headlines about how lives and destinies would be shattered. The falling balloon looks like a parachute – there is a large dome above the head that holds the bag, he explained. – If there is no calamity in the sky, let’s say a collision with another balloon so strong that the dome breaks, it falls like a parachute. There has been no such case in Lithuania, at least I don’t know. Such cases are extremely rare.

Let’s take skydivers. The soldier with all his equipment weighs about 130 kg and falls at a speed of 6 m / s. This speed is high, and efforts are constantly being made to reduce it. Imagine that both cylinder burners fail, which are like motors and are duplicated: if one fails, the rest can be used, although both motors fail very rarely. The balloon would then go down at a speed of up to 5 m / s “.

The larger the balloon, the slower it descends, due to inertia. In the event of a failure of both burners or a sudden descent for other reasons, even when landing from a low altitude, the balloon can reach higher speeds and, depending on the aircraft, is likely to hit the ground hard, but not fatally .

“Smooth landings” is a wish that pilots around the world often write or pronounce instead of saying goodbye.

The descents are usually more or less smooth, if such a description can be applied to a wicker basket: the balloon gently touches the ground and remains standing or turned on its side.

When a stronger wind blows, members of the ground team can catch the balloon behind a special rope, and when it flips, it can still skate a few or several dozen meters. If people flying together follow the instructions: stick firmly, stay inside the bag, and don’t put your hands or anything outside, even a harder descent ends with only stronger impressions or a slight scare.

“If the balloon descends with great force, it is possible that a person is dislocating or breaking something. I should spit on my left shoulder, but there were no more than 1,000 hours of flight fractures during my modesty. And even dislocations, – G.Leškevičius claimed. – I know that during a steep descent the passenger stretched out his leg, the next time the passenger stretched out his arm. I have stretched my arm or leg to the ground more than once. It still hasn’t happened to me in a balloon. It has to do with the ability to make a hard landing. That is why we instruct passengers: hold on tight, bend your knees, don’t stick out at all. If people follow the instructions and don’t miss a thing, if they stay in the bag, something is unlikely to happen. “

“There was no flight before which it would not land on the ground. “

As the balloons continued to fly in the sky, Daiva Rakauskaitė, perhaps the most titled Lithuanian female plane, explained how these planes fly and are operated on the Facebook social network to slow down the flow of “crash” reports.

According to her, first the dome of the balloon is filled with hot air. At its end is a hole covered by a large circle called a parachute sewn from the same material as the dome. It is attached to the dome with special adhesives so that the hot air does not escape when it inflates and the balloon rises. Burners “produce” hot air using a propane-butane gas mixture. Pilots usually carry gasoline with them for 2-2.5 hours. Flight Time.

“A hot air balloon flies where the wind blows (before the wind, unfortunately it does not fly), it rises to the top, allowing it to” catch “different directions of the wind and thus maneuver,” said the athlete, who won silver. twice in the European Women’s Championship. sixth place in the women’s championship.

If necessary, the pilot stops heating the air in the dome or opens a parachute covered hole and releases some hot air. To land faster, the pilot pulls the parachute harder. When it reaches the ground, it always fully opens the parachute to release air, so the dome drops to the ground.

“To those unfamiliar with balloons, it may appear to explode, but it is a mandatory part of the end of the flight,” the plane noted. – For the sake of clarity, try to inflate the bag and squeeze it; if there are no holes, it will explode. When fully deaerated, the cylinder dome packs in about 1 cu. m “bag” and ready for transport “.

The balloon requires a passage of approximately 55×55 m for takeoff and landing. According to D. Rakauskaitė, basically any meadow of this size is suitable even in the city.

“Professional pilots also land in small fields, they can descend even in the forest without serious damage to the dome (the fir is ideal for that). The balloon descends where it finds a suitable meadow on the way, and always lands on the ground. In my 13 year practice, there was not a single flight after which I would not land on land. Sometimes there are very smooth descents, sometimes they are more difficult, but my passengers liked descents more often (because after that there are something to remember), ”laughed the athlete.

If the dome is torn by a branch or the bottom of the dome is slightly burned during takeoff, a tailor or certified tailor will sew it after the flight and the balloon can be flown again.

The forecasts showed 2 p.m. good air before sliver

The hot air balloon championship held in Vilnius last week was marred by a painful incident that took place during the first flight, when a crew member of a team was injured by a balloon bag caught by a gust of wind.

True, although a fracture was initially suspected, it was only worth it with a severe bruise. This was due to a sudden deterioration in weather conditions. When the balloons rose, it was sunny, the correct wind was blowing. Soon the weather changed dramatically: the capital was hit by a storm after a hot day.

Before each flight, pilots do a great job: check weather forecasts, direction, and wind speed more than once, carefully select the takeoff location as much as possible, calculate the flight path, and sometimes even determine the location of the landing. Isn’t it possible to anticipate a sudden change in the weather and then not just fly or “fall” with the entire globe and passengers?

“It just came to our attention then. A pilot has a saying: it is better to let 60 scream than 6 carry in your hands. That procession would be the last … – G.Leškevičius said. – Sometimes we receive messages or calls: what Good weather, why don’t you fly? We had that weather all last week, although we forecast shocks.

We also monitored the situation before the flight on Thursday, followed the forecasts and saw that the front was far, 50-60 km, above Belarus. Nobody rushed to inflate the balloons until we were sure that the front had dropped to 10-20 km / h. That meant two hours of reserve. After taking off for half an hour, I flew fairly calmly. We saw clear clouds, but there was no clear front line, it was moving slowly. Only suddenly did it start to get stronger. Naturally, we notified each other and managed to land on time. Only a few colleagues who may have wanted to continue the race flight because they had not completed the tasks, or perhaps hung up in the woods, were delayed. The balloon is such a vehicle that it will not rotate and will not return 5 m to land on the beautiful grass that has just flown. ”

The interlocutor pointed out that it was not only the balloon pilots who found themselves in a similar situation. “The same day, the planes flew into Paluknys and monitored the weather from radars. After taking off in the Trakai area, they failed to return to Paluknis, although the flight took only a few minutes. I had to land at the alternate airfield. No We are completely ignorant. When we see danger, we realize that sometimes it is better not to start. All objective data from weather radars showed that we could guess. The first to get up, if we had seen it, we would have warned others. from the competition Tadas Gegevičius got up first. If he had seen any danger, he would have said: take no risks. After all, everyone has a radio connection. For half an hour we really enjoyed a smooth flight, “recalled G.Leškevičius.

There is laughter among the pilots: “The pilot asks the passengers if they have collected their raincoats. “No …” – they shook their heads. “Bad, very bad,” says the pilot.

This joke is understood by people who know the weather in which balloons fly. According to many, good weather will not necessarily be suitable for a flight. It needs wind, but not too strong, and not rain. There are also no thermals (upward warm air currents that form when the Earth’s surface warms up and makes the globe difficult to control), so in summer the balloons only fly a couple of hours after sunrise and a couple hours before sunset.

“Our instructions are simple: if we see an unforeseen meteorological phenomenon approaching, the only instruction is to let it go as soon as possible,” emphasized G. Leškevičius. – A rapid descent can be called a fall. Controlled fall as the pilot forces the balloon to land. A large field is suitable for descent, be it a meadow or a growing culture, it is important to be on the ground. It is easier to compensate for a damaged grain field than to allow people to suffer.

Most of the commentators (after the flight in which the plane was hit. Passed) called us crazy, pushing others into danger, wanting to get sick. I don’t know people as penetrating as aviators. Believe me: no one wants to shut up. Most of the nearly 40 pilots in the championship flew for their money. For the love of heaven, for the desire to show Vilnius and our country that we can and are determined to enjoy what each day brings.

But those who say we’re crazy are, in a sense, right. It is not incredibly difficult to survive in this field for a long time: a hobby or a sport, whatever it is called. It takes time, effort, knowledge, practice and big expenses if you compete. In the end, aviation needs to mature. How can so many people be considered stupid?

It is better to land in the city, but with a gas reserve.

It happens that the balloon lands on the ground in an unplanned place, not too bad, but with very good air. More than once, pilots have landed between houses, in a parking lot, or even in a roundabout. This is how the lost wind forces them to do it.

“Two cases this week: As soon as we woke up in Vilnius, we reached west. It blew lightly, so we asked air traffic controllers for permission to fly higher. There the wind turned east, but it was faster. We flew in a completely different direction than we flew underground. The wind blew low to the southeast and high to the northwest. However, we all decided that the group would get up and stay higher to get out of town.

We pilots are children of nature, dependent on nature, – said G.Leškevičius. – Nature likes to joke, sometimes not angry, sometimes worse. The way you accept it leads to decisions. If the wind is weak, there is no tragedy in landing in the city when you find a place like in a park. A simple process.It’s not like the balloon exploded or something broke, making it land in the city. The instructions say that the flight needs to be planned so that we can fly out of the city. Landing in a densely populated area is more risky, not for people, but for the balloon, there is a threat to break it, so we can suffer ourselves. In cities, pilots descend when the wind suddenly weakens, when it is actually quite weak. It is much safer to find a larger site and to land safely without gas so that you can regulate the landing speed and control the balloon. We never fly to the last drop of gas. In such a situation, we generally make the decision to let the city in. “

According to the pilot, it is not uncommon for the wind speed to change. In the air, it is not as relevant as when starting. For example, too strong a wind prevents the balloon from inflating, distracting the dome. If the pilot knows that the wind should weaken, find a cover for the start. In flight, if the wind gets stronger, it is not so scary. The balloon flies with the entire air mass and at the top of the wind speed it is not very relevant. Rokas Kostiuškevičius, who recently climbed to a height of more than 9 km in a simple hot air balloon, reached more than 170 km / h last year, flying over the Andes in South America. speed.

Before the flight, pilots launch small balloons, called probes, in the air to determine the actual direction and speed of the wind. Seeing the balloons rise vertically, they look for another starting point, for example, crossing from Vilnius to Trakai.