Captain’s Log: Entry 001

In February of 1976 I took two weeks off from the Perry-Warsaw airport.  The plan was for the family to stay with Grandpa and Grandma Regrut in New York City, and I would go up to the Poughkeepsie area to fly with Bill Hughes. I thought two weeks should be plenty of time since all I needed was 20 hours to get my commercial balloon rating. My VA benefits would reimburse me for the training expense. But I would have to pay at the time of the flight. So I applied for a $2,000 loan from the Bank of Castile. The loan approval came through on the morning of the day we were planning to leave. I remember being relieved at the time…looking back I see it as a God thing for sure.

So I would call Bill each morning to see if weather looked good. It was about an hour’s drive to the Stormville Airport where we would launch.

Bill had a Raven S-55, 77,000 cu ft. It was his original Jonathan Livingston Seagull balloon. I think his burner was a 3-can…probably comparable to the Piccard, at 4 million BTU. Chase vehicle was a car with flat trailer. The car would quit once in a while, when some sleeve in the engine would rotate and shut off the oil.  A young guy was chase crew. His fan was a 5 hp engine with wooden prop…an unusually big fan for the time. Bill had around a couple hundred hours of balloon time.

First flight was the morning of 2/21/76. Weather briefing was “we want to be in the middle of the high, for calm winds”.  I remember being amazed at the size of the thing as we inflated…don’t remember much more. During the flight I remember we passed over a ridge. I must have had some burner time, in fact I think I remember doing a touch and go, but don’t remember much about it. Bill flew the landing…his briefing was, “This will be a rip landing.” It was, and as we came to a stop I was hanging on to (suspending myself from) an upper upright. My main memory from that flight was how athletic and macho that landing made me feel.

After the flight I went with Bill to the Danbury airport, where he wanted to pick up a package. While there, he told somebody about our flight.  “Passing over that ridge, we got hit (his arms were gesturing, his voice was excited). The thing was going like this …”.  We must have been in some turbulence, and I had no idea. That may have been when he took over flying and found a landing site.

Three (oops, four) other memories from my time with Bill:

1.  On another flight, maybe the second one, My wife Miriam Sue and her Mom Grandma Regrut came to the flight with me and chased. They were the first ones I watched being excited and impressed, as I had been. (I still love seeing her be impressed with a nice pass over the falls, or a nice landing, etc.)  I don’t remember much of the flight, but it was another rip landing. During their chase, they saw some people in a field up the hill from the road. That probably was us, but they didn’t know it, and finally caught up with us back at the airport.
2. One morning I arrived for a flight and Bill was hesitant. Seemed to think it was windy. I couldn’t see any motion in the trees (didn’t think to listen) (and it was February, so no leaves, just bare branches). I should have known it wouldn’t be smart for a student to push his instructor to fly when he didn’t want to, but I was gung ho. We put the balloon together and Bill handed me a rope to tie off. I tied one end of the rope to the basket, and the other end to the car. It was a tether rope…150 feet long. As we started to inflate I was holding the mouth open, and the balloon started to drag. I noticed the rope uncoiling at my feet. So that was how I learned that a tie-off should be tight enough to PREVENT the balloon from dragging. I assured Bill we could tie it off tighter, but we packed up and waited to fly another day.
3. On another unflyable day, Bill asked me to help him take an inventory. We spread out the envelope, he went up and down each gore. I had a clipboard and took notes as he called out “L shaped tear, middle of gore 3″…”6 inch rip, lower gore 5”. Don’t know how many, but there were a bunch. His comment: “I gotta get this onto a sewing machine”. I think that contributed toward my attitude toward maintenance that ended up with me burning up 2/3 of the mouth of the Blue Balloon (Free Spirit). The bad lesson: What you get from your instructor is as much what’s caught as what’s taught. Later, other students confirmed that you needed to pull stuff out of Bill. He didn’t talk a lot. But the good lesson: I have always thought that Bill had and conveyed a wonderful confidence in the balloon system. He stayed on the ground when he thought he should (in spite of my pressure) but he was willing to try different things and seemed to really enjoy flying.
4. As the two weeks were drawing to an end, I had just 5.1 hours in 4 flights. I asked Bill if I could solo when I got home as Watson and Bill and I had the Piccard. He said “Well, be conservative, and you will be OK.”

Years later I thought about the fact that he never did sign my logbook for solo.