10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

This must be a record for the highest number of free flight aircraft launched at any given time. Very interesting sensation when you see the entire sky filled with these for the annual Loy Krathong holiday in Thailand. It's always interesting to watch them go through different wind layers as they gain altitude, sometimes completely reversing direction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yobttJOnxyI

RE: 10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

Now that's neat. Are they paper bags or what ? How many fires do they start ?

RE: 10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

Yes, they are made out of light paper, with a light bamboo ring at the bottom to retain shape and mild steel wire to the wick. Amazingly, there is rarely a fire caused by them, but occasionally you do hear of one. The festival is at the end of the rainy season so the forests don't usually burn, but I have heard of a market being torched.

RE: 10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

Interesting. I had a good friend from Thailand. He passed away recently. Any drawings of these ??

RE: 10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

Sorry to hear about your friend. Don't have any drawings but they must be made everywhere here. They sell for less than a dollar on roadsides.

RE: 10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

Those are awesome .... It is freezing here and snowing hard !! Good time to fly one.

RE: 10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

I bet they would climb well in the cold air and would look nice among the snowflakes. It's a cool 68 degrees here this morning and I don't miss Idaho winters one bit. I hear that winter came early to the Pacific NW this year.

RE: 10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

Wow, I'm about 2 hours from Idaho. I don't imagine you miss the weather there. 68 deg sounds good to me. the wind chill now is 23 F

RE: 10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

Thats really cool! I wish I could have been there to have seen that!

RE: 10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

Chinese Lanterns are now common-place in England.

Same technology, but only about a 1/4 of the volume.

As long as the fire is burning, the balloon is NOT coming down, so the fire risk is tiny. When you watch them, you see the fires expire whilst the balloons are very high.

They are remarkably compelling to watch.



I've little doubt that, somewhere, some authoritarian-type, will declare them to be a risk that is not to be tolerated.

RE: 10,000 Free Flight Fire Balloons
 

Wow, that is quite a sight! I've seen the smaller chinese lanterns go up - unless something goes wrong, the fires been out a long time before it gets back to the ground.