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Picture of the day -
August 14, 2006
Hot Air Balloons Preparing For Lift-Off In Abingdon, VA
Click photo to enlarge
Every year, the last day of the Virginia Highlands Festival
is kicked off bright and early by the launching of several beautiful
hot air balloons, and every year I seem to miss out on the action
except for seeing an occasional solitary balloon float by throughout
the day. Well, this year I decided to get up with the chickens and
head over to the
Southwest Virginia 4-H Educational Center in
Abingdon to watch the balloons
take off.
When I got to the launch site, there were balloons lying everywhere,
all stretched out in neat lines waiting for the inflation process to
begin. Before long, the air was filled with the distinctive sound of
flames being shot into the balloons' openings. Little by little they
began to fill up with the hot air, expanding slowly but steadily as
they began to take on the shape of a balloon.
Since I had never witnessed a mass hot air balloon launch before I didn't
have a clue about how it would all unfold. I figured there would be
an orderly lift-off of the balloons in some particular order, each
one being released by a ground crew upon command. Wrong! They simply
gently lifted off one-by-one as the hot air inside them finally made
them lighter than the air around them. One would take off here,
another there, until the last one finally left the ground and
drifted away in pursuit of the others.
The start of this year's balloon rally was quite a remarkable thing
to witness. The fundamentals of physics behind the process of
inflating and flying a hot air balloon are very basic, yet the
ability to successfully and safely pilot one takes a lot of practice
and skill - as well as a lot of courage!
Well, this year's Virginia Highlands Festival has come and gone, but
it went out with amazing patches of color painting the sky above the
Abingdon area throughout the day. I think I'll get up early again
next year to watch the balloons take off, and I'll probably take my
granddaughter
Olivia
with me!
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