{"id":63,"date":"2007-07-06T15:10:13","date_gmt":"2007-07-06T14:10:13","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-07-06T15:10:13","modified_gmt":"2007-07-06T14:10:13","slug":"ballooning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/?p=63","title":{"rendered":"Ballooning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m following with great interest David Hempleman-Adams <a href=\"http:\/\/www.toshibachallenge.com\/?act=Home\" title=\"Toshiba Transatlantic Challenge\">Toshiba Transatlantic Challenge<\/a>.  I&#8217;ve first met David when he was learning to fly a balloon 10 years ago.  I qualified for my Private Pilot&#8217;s Licence (Balloons and Airships) in 1993 and flew my balloon out of Victoria Park in Bath a number of times when he was flying with his instructor.  His instructor once asked if I&#8217;d take him on a flight with me so he would get someone else&#8217;s ideas about how to do things!<\/p>\n<p>A few minutes ago he wrote from the balloon &#8220;Nearly there! HQ just told me I&#8217;ve got 60 miles to go before I can start looking for a suitable landing site. I&#8217;m starting my slow descent.  Apparently there is a helicopter on its way to get some airborne footage. Fantastic, the evening sun is just beautiful up here, the shots should look awesome.  Not long now, phew&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck and a soft landing, David.<\/p>\n<p>PS  I&#8217;ve just taken another look at his position and track and it appears he&#8217;ll be landing to the north of Lyons and south of Dijon.  There&#8217;s some very decent wine produced there and he&#8217;ll be right in the heart of it, what better place to come down and celebrate 5 new world records? :-) The wind speed in that area still looks a little brisk for a gentle return to earth so he may fly on until nearer sunset when the wind should decrease and any gusting die down.  My guess if for a 20:00 GMT (19:00) BST landing.<\/p>\n<p>PPS Looks like he&#8217;s landed, the tracking has no altitude information, the wind speed is 15kts but the balloon speed is 0kts.  The last postion reported was 4.9 N 4.64 which places the landing about 15 miles south west of Beaune.  Well done!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m following with great interest David Hempleman-Adams Toshiba Transatlantic Challenge. I&#8217;ve first met David when he was learning to fly a balloon 10 years ago. I qualified for my Private Pilot&#8217;s Licence (Balloons and Airships) in 1993 and flew my balloon out of Victoria Park in Bath a number of times when he was flying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}