Hot-air balloon catches fire in Virginia

[1Gary]

Skip-god speed to all those involved.

http://news.yahoo.com/reports-hot-air-b ... 25242.html

[astrozam]

Yikes! .... that's a scary situation to get in.

[Smiliesafari]

It pains all of us in the balloon community whenever this happens. From what I've read so far it was a power line strike. Power line strikes are the number one killer of balloon people. In the course of our training we are taught over and over and over to always be aware of power lines. The problem being that from the air they are difficult to see. From the ground, with the sky as a back drop, the power lines show quite nicely. From the air the back drop is the ground and it does a great job of masking the lines. To add to the problem we fly at very low levels. Mostly at a thousand feet or less. It's great fun to fly at tree top level and a bit lower actually flying through the trees. It sharpens your flying skills. For the most part flying balloons is very safe. But, like most adventurous things we do the margin for error is very small.

[astrozam]

Appreciate that additional perspective from a Ballooner's ( hope I got that right ) viewpoint Skip.

[CaptSquid]

Always wanted to try hot-air (without benefit of politicians) ballooning. Even wanted to fly engineless aircraft. Earlier, eyeballs kept me from doing it. Now, it's diabetes and girth.

[1Gary]

http://news.yahoo.com/coaches-pilot-rem ... --spt.html