We chose The BalloonWorks
FireFly Balloontm as our first Hot Air Balloon in 1985 and since then have purchased two others.
We've logged over one thousand hours in these balloons and have experienced the extremes of Canadian winters,
the sweltering heat of Louisiana summers
and the harsh dryness of New Mexican deserts. We've flown over mountains at 13,000 feet, withstood surprise downpours in Japan,
and we've touched and floated with the waters
of numerous rivers. In competition, we can off-load, assemble and be airborne
in less than 10 minutes. All are testament to the well-crafted ruggedness and sound, logical simplicity that is FireFly.
We became an Authorized Dealer for The BalloonWorks because
we believe there is no other system available that has incorporated as many thoughtful considerations to make the sport
as safe and as pleasurable as possible.
WINDBORNE BALLOONING LIMITED
OTTAWA, ONTARIO
FireFly Balloonstm
are made at The BalloonWorks in Statesville, North Carolina. More of a craftsman's workshop than a factory, The BalloonWorks is where all aspects
of a FireFly Balloon are designed and crafted. It's a place with the earthy, friendly smells of wood shavings, leather and wicker. Everything
that bears the BalloonWorks name is made there and the engineers still design the products in-house to ensure they're built to the exacting
standards that have been progressively developing since 1972.
Over 1200 separate inspections take place during the construction of each balloon.
Every piece - valves, hoses, ropes, panels - whether fabricated in the workshop or not, undergoes
a rigid incoming first-piece inspection. Every fuel tank is pressure-checked. Every roll of fabric is tested for tensile and tear strength,
porosity and color variations, and flaws in weaving, before it's labeled airworthy. Each panel is inspected as it's sewn into its gore, and each
completed gore is again inspected as it moves from one sewing station to another. Sewing machines are calibrated twice a day,
every day, to ensure
consistent conformity with their sewing specifications.
When each balloon is finished, it's inspected again, fully assembled and inflated on the test field, under flight conditions. This almost
fanatical attention to detail results in a quality-control program that is unrivaled in the ballooning industry.
OVERVIEW
THE TRIANGULAR CARRIAGE
THE MIRAGE BURNER
THE FLEXNET ENVELOPE
Concepts Behind The FireFly Balloon
The successful design of a modern Hot Air Balloon is an engineering problem
that must combine three distinct components
- an envelope, an engine and a carriage - into an integrated, functional whole that is both safe and
practical in its assembly.
The BalloonWorks, with its trademark FlexNet Envelope, Mirage Burner and Triangular Carriage has created the intelligent solution to
this problem - The FireFly Balloontm.
The Balloon Carriage is the most complex structure of the entire system
and presents the most challenging design problems because of the variety of functions it must serve.
- It must provide a structure strong enough to carry its Certified static and inertial loads safely.
- It must provide secure accommodation for the pilot and passengers during the entire flight experience, particularly
during landings.
- It must provide secure, logical and convenient locations for instruments, fuel, plumbing and burner.
- It should provide a safe and secure storage area for maps, strikers and tools.
- It should be flexible, lightweight and well-balanced.
- It should be easy and inexpensive to maintain and repair.
- It should be aesthetically pleasing.
The equilateral triangle is the most stable shape in nature and
The BalloonWorks has chosen it as the basis for many aspects of their product. Most apparent is the Triangular Carriage which
is unique to The BalloonWorks.
For any given floor
area, the triangle provides the most stable base and longest sides. The three 60 degree angles provide maximum floor space
for pilot and passengers while storing the fuel cylinders, hoses and instruments safely out of the way in the recessed corners.
The ingenuity evident in its construction is unsurpassed. The 9-ply birch hardwood floor is actually cradled in a net of six
aircraft ropes certified to lift 18,000 pounds. Securely fastened to a central tie-plate by eye splices and protected from abrasion by
super tough plastic tubing, the suspension ropes run through hardwood skids, up through the floor, up the carriage structure and out the
burner supports to end in an ultra-strong loop used to fasten the toggles at the end of the
envelope suspension ropes.
The wicker carriage is woven with a tight, vertical weave, well suited
to resisting entanglement in branches or powerlines. Horizontal weaves can easily snag. A finishing urethane coating inside and out
ensures the wicker will resist drying out and becoming brittle or rotting from prolonged exposure to moisture. This maintains the wickers
ability to flex, absorbing and distributing any bumps during landings.
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The engineers at The BalloonWorks, balloonists amongst them, developed a
set of criteria by which they would design their burner system.
- Burner Reliability - Both the primary liquid vaporization system and the pilot burner must be highly dependable
to minimize malfunctions and flame-outs.
- Burner Output - To increase flight safety margins, the absolute burner output must be extremely high.
- Flame Characteristics - The flame must be efficient and clean burning, giving off a minimum of soot and radiant heat.
The flame should be shaped to minimize scorches and burns to the envelope.
- Mounting - The burner should be mounted so that the flame can be precisely directed, it cannot tip over or pose a danger
to the people in the basket and it must be self-centering when the handle is released. The fuel lines should be isolated to
prevent catching on branches or powerlines. Passengers should be prevented from using them as support during landings.
- Safety and Convenience - The burner should be comfortable to use and fully operational with one hand.
It requires a fast on-off response time to reduce
the likelihood of fabric damage during inflations and landings. It must not permit the flame to wash back onto the pilot or passengers.
- Redundancy - In the unlikely event of a major failure in the primary burner, there must be an equally efficient back-up
auxiliary system that is powerful enough to climb, arrest a descent and allow a controlled landing.
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The result is the Mirage Burner.
It has the highest heat output
certified for balloon engines in the world - over 32 million BTU's at 240 psi tank pressure. Propane is
forced through thirty-three feet of vaporizing coil, enters the flow guide to combine with air in a 60 to 1 ratio and is ignited
upon exit by three pilot lights producing a long intense, nearly invisible blue flame. Pilot lights have their own pressure
regulated fuel supply and the pilot flame burns deep inside pilot burner stacks making it next to impossible for air
turbulence to extinguish them. Fire II was made more powerful and integrated as the auxiliary engine with its own separate
plumbing, valves, withdrawal lines and burner outlets. Mounting on the uprights in a suspended tripod fashion
places all the burner controls in the center of the carriage, equidistant from all sides or corners. Not surprisingly,
the Mirage Burner and Fire II have become two of the reasons for the popularity of FireFly Balloons.
Many modern Hot Air Balloons employ a system of horizontal and
vertical load tapes into which the stresses of flight are transferred. Since these structures are rigid, the fabric panels of the
envelope carry some of the load. This is known as a skin-stressed envelope. While not necessarily bad, it demands that
heavier fabrics be utilized to maintain the integrity of the system for safe flight. Manufacturers of this envelope type
tend to use nylon for its availability in heavier weights and its initial strength. They also favor using folded seems to join
panels to each other and to the load tapes.
The BalloonWorks opted for a different school of thought. There is
an obvious correlation between the volume of a balloon and its load lift capability. The system itself, of course, comprises part
of that load and the difference between the system weight and its lift capability is what's left for the payload.
The best way to understand a FireFly Balloon is to picture an
orange with the segments running vertically. In balloons, these segments are called gores and the joints between them
are called gore seams. In skin-stressed construction, a heavy web tape with adjacent panels sewn to it forms this seam.
It's called a load tape because the carriage is suspended from it and the fabric stresses are hopefully transferred to it.
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The FireFly Balloon employs the use of a pocket running the vertical length of the gore seam. Inside the pocket, they've put
a very strong and light rope, or load cord, which is free to move up and down inside the pocket. The rope is shorter than the seam
and is attached at the top to the top girdle and at the bottom to the bottom girdle. The girdles are structural members in that
they receive and transfer loads. Making the ropes shorter than the seams accomplishes two things. It provides the beautifully rounded
gore shape and it ensures that the loads cannot be placed on the fabric panels. So, the only function of the fabric
envelope is that it holds the air and provides a lifting surface. |
When it came to the task of sewing each fabric panel to its neighbour,
The BalloonWorks looked to a method of window construction that was used when glass was rare and expensive to replace.
The mullions in a window today tend to be for aesthetics, but the original reason for this construction method was to isolate
individual panes of glass. If breakage occurred, it would affect the panes individually and maintain the integrity of the whole,
reducing the extent of the damage and hence the expense of repair.
With Hot Air Balloons, restricting the extent of damage is a matter
of safety
so the BalloonWorks developed the FlexNet Envelope Systemtm.
In the system, each fabric panel is surrounded by a strong tape and adjacent panels are sewn into one side of the tape
and not to each other. The tape acts as an isolating member, as a mullion in effect, and if a tear occurs, it may travel only as far as
the tape before it either stops or is deflected back into the panel. With damage thus minimized, the pilot may be afforded more time
to make a safer emergency landing.
The FireFly Envelope Valve
As a means of balloon deflation, the FireFly Envelope Valve, or
parachute valve as it is often called, is by far the most ingenious approach to date. Its normal resting position is closed and it only operates by deliberate and
continuous action. It is automatically re-sealable, irrespective of how many times it has been used, and no action is required to
accomplish its closing other than letting it alone. It's capable of proportional valving, releasing huge amounts of air for deflation
or small amounts for adjustments to vertical flight. Its position at the top of the envelope prevents its dislocation from snagging.
How does it work? First, they put a hole in the top of the balloon with a stiffener around it to act as a seal. Next, they fill the hole
with a fabric disc that's slightly larger than the hole. Attached to the perimeter of the disc is a set of lines that connect to
each other at a focal point below, inside the envelope. This point is then attached to a rope which extends down to the carriage
to act as the control for the valve. Another set of lines connected to the disc, are in turn connected to the envelope at the gore seams
to limit the downward distance of the disc. To prevent the valve from popping out the top of the balloon, the load cords in the
envelope (the ones sliding inside those pockets) extend past their attachment at the top girdle and connect to a central
steel ring. The valve is held against this rope net with the push of the heated air inside the envelope. By using some simple
laws of physics, the valve provides a venting capability and versatility superior to anything used before it in ballooning.
FireFly, Mirage and FlexNet are all registered trademarks of
The BalloonWorks in Statesville, North Carolina.
See What's Available in the
Contacting Windborne Ballooning
If you have any questions, please feel free to call us at 1 (613) 739-7388
or,
provide whatever contact information you deem necessary and e-mail us at
WINDBORNE BALLOON SALES.
Thanks for your interest!
BALLOON PILOT TRAINING
WINDBORNE BALLOONING LIMITED
FireFly, Mirage and FlexNet are registered tradenames of
The BalloonWorks.
The BalloonWorks and FireFly Balloons Logos are registered trademarks
and are used here with the permission of The BalloonWorks of Statesville, North Carolina USA.
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