hotairballoonist

How have you been? Making some changes, Since the beginning HotAirBalloonist.com was designed so “WE” balloonists could share anything and everything with each other. HotAirBalloonist.com has a public face as well as a PRIVATE members only section. HotAirBalloonist.com has something for everyone! HAB. is a storehouse of Information, Files, Photos, Documents and Presentations and so much more. We also created a membership called the Registered Guest Membership. This was a FREE membership that allowed Balloonists from all over to participate in areas of the site that were for members only and to participate at no cost. This system worked for nearly two years till some enterprising spammers got into the site and started posting thousands of junk postings. We cleaned out more than 10,000 files in one folder alone. SO… We have altered the registered guest program. It is still possible to register on the site and to see some of the “Members Only” sections without paying for a membership. To become a Registered Guest on the site you must register and we must approve you. A Registered Guest will still be able to see areas of the site that are not open to the public but will no longer be able to create new posts on the site. For example, if you have equipment for sale you will need to register and be approved then let us know you want to post equipment for sale and we will give you a temporary membership to do so. We still want Balloonists to have the ability to post items for sale at no cost, but we must balance that with keeping the site “spam free” and SAFE for our members. If you are currently a Registered Guest on the site the only thing that has changed is that you no longer can post new topics where in the past you could. As this evolves we may make even more changes to keep the site free of spam and safe for our members. Of course you can bypass all of this simply by purchasing any of the regular memberships on the site. NEW DOWNLOADS We now have a new information slider on the front “FORUMS” page. This new slider shows the latest downloads posted in the Download Center. This is an easy way for you to find new stuff that you can download. This slider will show the 10 latest files that have been uploaded to the site. These file could be anything from photographs to presentations to map files and more. Some are free for download and some are for purchase. Remember ALL FILES are free to paid members of HotAirBalloonist.com. This new feature is an easy way to stay up to date on the latest files available for members. Video Tutorials We have started the task of creating new Video Tutorials on the site. These new videos will be a step by step guide with complete narration on how to preform many of the common tasks on the site. In the past many of these tutorials did not play on some devices. ALL of the new tutorials will be saved in .mp4 format so they will play on any device. In addition we will be creating a new forum on the front page where you can see the new additions to the Video Tutorial Library. The new forum on the front “FORUMS” page will simply be called “HowTO”. Each time we post a new “How TO” video the system will post a new topic in the new forum category. Log in and go to the new “How TO” category and click the “Follow” button and you will be notified via email each time a new video has been uploaded. CHAT ROOMS This is one of the greatest new features added to the site. CHAT ROOMS! Not only for the public but for members as well! The entire scope of this benefit (feature) may be a little hard to grasp at first. We have a Public Chat rooms and we have a private members only chat rooms. We can create a chat room for your area! (Public or Private) Imagine all your local pilots being able to chat and talk about launch and landing areas, Weather, Crew and more. Even better yet is that if you have a CLUB on HotAirBalloonist.com you can create a chat room for your CLUB! No Kidding! Imagine creating a club of your area pilots and crews and then having the ability to create your own private chat room! Yes we continue to make HAB better and better…. MAP FILES Did you know that HotAirBalloonist.com creates map files for balloon events? Our files are created for use with the HotAir app and for the Motion X app. If you have not used these applications we suggest you have a look at them. Both are great applications for use in pre-flight planning and inflight navigation. These files are FREE for download and you can download the file directly into your phone tablet or any device you are using the HotAir app or Motion X app on. There are also FREE Tutorials on how to download the files into your device. All available on HotAirBalloonist.com Thanks for your support! As always we thank our paid members who allow us to create and maintain this fantastic site. If you have not been on in a while and have a membership please log in to look! There is so much more on the Members side of the site that you will be amazed. Those of you who do not have a paid membership, we suggest you get a membership and see the 1,000’s of things on the member’s side. A crew membership for an entire year is only $20 and a general membership is only $20 a year. Pilots can also get a membership for as little as $4 a month. Please consider supporting the site. We were Lucky As many of you know we are located in the central part of Florida. In fact we are just behind (west of) Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The recent hurricane took a turn to the north and spared us. Our hearts go out to the Bahamas as they were totally devastated by the storm. If you are in a position to donate please do. We know firsthand here in Florida the unbelievable power of these storms. Irma hit us and we still have visible damage 2 years later. All for now, more soon. Jeff

Hi Friends and Fellow Ballooners. It has been a while since our last newsletter. We have been very hard at work on the HotAirBalloonist.com site. The biggest accomplishment of the last few months has been the Migration to a new hosting platform. Our old hosting location was not upgrading our server to meet our expanding needs so we moved. As you can imagine the task of moving a site the size of HotAirBalloonist.com was daunting to say the least. We moved more than 4.6 Gigabytes of data in over 5500 folders and 43,500 files including all the member information for over 900 members! I am happy to say we did not lose a single file. We are also happy to say that the entire migration took place with very little front end disturbance. We basically did it smooth enough it was hard for the users to know it had been done. Our new hosting provider and server environment gives us faster load times, more site security and many more options for expansion of the site and has enhanced the user abilities. We now can move forward on things that were restricted before. Go and have a look around the site when you have time. Balloon Camps, Once again we were privileged to be the provider for the BFA Kids Camps Name Badges. A super shout out goes out to the Camps, Directors, Staff and Kids who make those balloon camps such a fantastic event in the lives of our future balloonists. “Creating priceless memories is a priceless endeavor” Maps, Files and Apps. We recently did a post for the Orlando area pilots and realized that this would be helpful for all balloonists where ever you are. Here is a link to the post in the Orlando Pilots Exchange. NOTE* Do you use Motion X? Do you use the HotAir App? We have files for BOTH!. Here is a screen shot of the National Balloon Classic flying area as seen on the HotAir App. We can create these types of maps for your flying area too! Do you have a GPX file of your flying area? Do you want to share it with your other pilot friends? Send the file to us. Tell us a little about your area and we will create a download for your fellow pilots to download directly into their phone or tablet. We have also created some fantastic KML files for use with the HotAir App. As a member you can download all the files on the site for FREE. Log in and go download the HotAir App tutorial. If you have never used the HotAir app you will be surprised by all the features of the app. Even if you currently use the HotAir app you may learn something. The app is free for download for members. Many do not realize the huge database of downloads in our Download Center. Keep in mind that there are areas of the Download Center are not for the public. If you go to the download center and you are not a logged in member of the site you are missing most of what is there. Log in and go back to the Download Center and you will see entire categories that you did not see before. Chat Rooms, We have now added Chat Rooms to the HotAirBalloonist.com site. Some of them are public chat rooms and some of them are private (Member Only) rooms. We have found them to be very useful for pre-flight chatter among the pilots in our area. Many smart phones and tablets now have a dictation feature. So you can go to the chat room and just talk. The nice part of this is that you do not have to text several people at one time. Just have them all go into the chat room and talk as a group. If you wish to have a chat room set up for your flying area just let us know. As a member on the site you can also set up a flying club in your area. You can create your own PRIVATE chat room for only the members of your club. Keep in mind there is NO EXTRA charge to start a club on HotAirBalloonist.com so start one for your flying friends today! The Follow Feature. I know I have touched on this in past newsletters, but, I cannot express how fantastic a feature this is on the HotAirBalloonist.com site. You can choose what you want to hear about. Imagine there are 5 topics you see posted in one category. Three of those you could care less about but two of those topics are about things you would like to know more about or things you have questions about as well. The “Follow” feature allows you to check the items you want to hear more about. Then when an answer or comment is made about that topic the HAB system will send you an instant email! You can also UN-Follow when and if you choose. Currently we have a forum inside the Hot Topics category called “HAB Walkie Talkie”. This forum will send out 267 emails to balloonists all over the world when any new topic is posted. Have a question you want answered? Post it! ** Remember you must be a logged in member to create new topics in any of the forums. HalfOff From now till the end of this month, you may purchase a membership and get half off. Choose any of the following memberships. Ride Operator, Pilot, Ground Crew, Equipment Seller, Manufacturer, General Membership, Event Organizer or Student Pilot. Choose the Yearly option and during checkout use the coupon code HalfOff and receive a 50% discount on the membership of your choice. A General Membership is only $20 a year! So from now to the end of this month you can get a General Membership for an entire year for only $10. Don’t wait. This offer will expire at the end of this month. I will try to hang out in the chat room as often as I can to answer questions and connect with fellow balloonists. If you have time come visit in the HAB Chat rooms! Only a logged in member can go into the HAB Member chat room. All the best. Please fly safe. Jeff A Thompson. NOTE* You must be logged in. If you are not logged in you will see an error page when you click on the links in this email.

The more I think about this the more I become energized. Please forgive me for sticking another note in your email box but we must act as a whole or we may be doomed. I want to fly and not sit and talk about the good ole days when I did fly. The following is what I have sent my two senators about the "Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Re-authorization Act of 2017." You may use this if you wish. Dear Senator Nelson, While I appreciate the intent of the bill, the wording requiring the Air Balloon section (585) does nothing to promote safety and does have the real possibility to seriously harm the industry. Please allow me to elaborate. You cannot regulate pilot Judgement. Your bill regulates the health of the pilot via a medical exam yet there has never been an accident with a balloon that has been attributed to a pilot health issue. So what is it exactly you think you will fix with the medical requirement? This new regulation will not fix or stop any incident that has ever happened in a balloon. Do you understand why a Hot Air Balloon was exempt in the first place? In the early days of ballooning (I was there and a pilot) a balloon was a small aircraft and generally only carried one or two passengers and was not considered a likely commercial aircraft. In those days there was no consideration about a balloon that would carry a dozen or more people, it was just not even imagined. But today there are balloons that carry 12, 14, even 18 to 20 or more passengers. The balloon insurance companies have realized that those balloons do carry more risk and should require more stringent requirements on the pilots. I as well have no issue with more regulation on the larger balloons. They require a higher level of skill and vigilance to operate in a safe manor and some sort of medical exam may indeed be appropriate. To just throw a general blanket of regulation over the entire industry would harm the world of ballooning in ways you can not envision. There was a reason the industry was exempt in the first place and that has not changed. If you are seriously interested in creating regulation that would make the industry safer you should address the FAR 91.119. This regulates the altitude balloons can operate. Let me quote one line from that regulation. § 91.119 Minimum safe altitudes: General. Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes: (a)Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface. Think about this statement. On a hot air balloon the “POWER UNIT” is the burner on the balloon. If the burner goes out the balloon is going to fall to the ground. There is no glide slope like a plane. There is not steering or altering the course of the aircraft. There is no slowing the balloon down or banking left or right. YOU ARE GOING TO FALL TO EARTH and the higher you are the faster you will fall. So does it make sense to have a balloon at such a high altitude? Lets put this in some different terms. I have a pickup truck and a mile long hill. You are at the bottom of the hill and I have tied you into a chair so you can not move. Where do you want me to be when I put the truck into neutral and let it go? If I am at the top of the hill you will get hit by a truck doing 50 MPH and surely be killed. Or… If the truck is near the bottom of the hill then you will be bruised and live. A balloon down low is a safer aircraft then a balloon up high when you apply 91.119 (a). So here is the amendment I would suggest you place in section (585) of the the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act of 2017. Amend the section 585 to say this. 585.Applicability of medical certification standards to operators of air balloons (a)Short title This section may be cited a the Commercial Balloon Pilot Safety Act of 2018. (b)In general Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration shall revise section 61.3(c) of title 14, Code of Federal Regulations (relating to second-class medical certificates), to apply to an operator of an air balloon (capable of carrying more than 12 passengers) to the same extent such regulations apply to a pilot flight crew member of other aircraft. (c)Air balloon defined In this section, the term air balloon has the meaning given the term balloon in section 1.1 of title 14, Code of Federal Regulations (or any corresponding similar regulation or ruling). ADD THIS SECTION (d) Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration shall revise section 91.119 section (1) to read as follows. (1) An Air Balloon or helicopter may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section, provided each person operating the Air Balloon or helicopter complies with any routes or altitudes specifically prescribed for an Air Balloon or helicopters by the FAA; and The first part of 91.119 states Sec. 91.119 — Minimum safe altitudes: General. Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes: Since we navigate by wind layers at different altitude we use our ability to change altitude to navigate, Hence we are always in the process of landing from the time we lift off? Where I fly here in Florida we have thousands of square miles of swamp and Forrest. We are in the process of landing from the time we leave the earth and every altitude we fly at is used to carry us to our landing area. So I believe you could interpret that first sentence as an exception for balloons. I look forward to your input. Jeff A Thompson

Hi Everyone. I am looking again for a little help. First of all THANK YOU to all who helped me get in contact with many safety seminars all over the country. We have 10 care packages going out to these seminars with 100’s of giveaway goodies for all the attendees and some extra gifts for some lucky winners. You may see some of the HAB stuff at your seminar soon. Here is my next project. I am looking for Balloon Events. More specifically I am looking for the event organizers or those persons whom are responsible for the event, or on the events committee. In past years I have spent my January filling the HAB event calendar with as many events as I could find. No matter how hard I tried, I still missed many events or did not have the complete or most up to date information. This year I would like set up an account for each event, so they may post their own information on the calendar. So if you are involved with the planning of a balloon event or you know someone who is please have them contact me privately so I can set up an account and they can post their event information for everyone to see and use. If you wish to see what an event looks like go to the Calendar page and look at MARCH. There are two events you can view. “My Balloon Event” the first weekend of the month (Sample Event), or the FAVIA 225 (REAL event) starting on the 22nd posted by Tony Saxton. There is a video tutorial available for viewing in the download center under the category Video Tutorials Located at: Downloads > Tutorials & Presentations > Video Tutorials >How to Create a Calendar Event <SIDE note>. The BFA Hall of fame “NOTABLE BALLOONIST BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION” forum is now open for public viewing. If you have time have a look. If you know of someone who should be listed contact the BFA HOF committee. Located at: Home > BFA > BFA Hall of Fame Committee > NOTABLE BALLOONIST BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Thank you all again. Jeff HotAirBalloonist.com

It’s a new year! Safety Seminar Season, Each year many safety seminars happen all over the country. HotAirBalloonist.com encourages everyone to attend a seminar if you can. The ideas expressed the topics covered and the general discussion; even during the breaks, is helpful to all of us. We as a whole must continue to strive for 100% safety. Each year we hear about silly accidents that simply should not have happened. Each year we watch other pilots do stuff we all know is done in poor judgement or just simply WRONG. Each year we promise to do better but honestly, we do not! HotAirBalloonist.com is trying very hard to help. This year we will be donating Pilot and Crew checklists to many safety seminars. These checklists are printed on 80 Mil PVC (Same as most credit or debit cards). They can be found and customized in our store online if you wish to have your own. These checklists will come with a plastic luggage strap so they can be attached to a flight bag, a tank, basket handle or anywhere the pilot finds handy. We will also be producing Crew Checklists as well. Things we NEED to talk about. Another item at HotAirBalloonist.com is the new “Things we NEED to talk about” forum. This new forum is inside the Safety Seminars category on the HAB site. This is a private forum for members only. If you go to the site as a guest (Not logged in) you will not be able to see the forum. Once you have logged in to the site you will be able to find the Forum “Things we NEED to talk about” inside the Safety Seminar category. When you go to this new Forum you can select the “FOLLOW” button on the right side of the page. When you ‘Follow” a topic, the system will send you an email any time a new topic has been posted. This will keep you informed about what is currently being talked about in the safety arena. ONLY MEMBERS, who are logged in, have access to this. If you have a “Registered Guest” membership you will need to upgrade to see this new forum. Just go to the store and select the membership that is right for you and upgrade your account. Then feel free to talk about problems you have seen and potential ways to solve. If we all contribute we all can gain! Things you DON’T see. We still have a hard time getting people to realize the stuff you don’t see. I know that does not make a whole bunch of sense but if you are just visiting the site as a guest and you are not logged in, you are missing more than half of the site! This is what makes our site so fantastic! We have a window for the general public to learn about ballooning and find service providers, festivals, Instructors and more on our “OPEN” or public side but as a member when you “LOG IN” the site becomes a HUGE resource for everything! Clubs, Services, Supplies, Instruction, Power Point presentations, Files, Events, and more, all at your fingertips with a click of a mouse. We monitor the site many times a day. We encourage participation and look forward to creating solutions to your needs. But, No matter how good we are and what we have to offer if you don’t participate we might as well sit in a closet! We can have the library of congress for ballooning at your fingertips but if you don’t use it then what good are we? When you log in, anything that is new, items you have not seen or read will appear with a DARK icon. Items with a faded out icon are things you have already seen. We have tried to make it as easy for you to keep up with what is new as we can. Did you hear about the Court case in California that states a balloon ride is not to be considered under the Common Carrier laws? How about whether or not you are operating a commercial vehicle when you take your truck and trailer to a balloon festival? Would you like to be able to download a Propane technical pocket guide or how about a diagram for an inflator fan frame? These are all things that are available on the site for our membership. If you do not log in or you do not have a membership you don’t know what you’re missing. Go and get a paid membership. Support HotAirBalloonist.com. A general membership is only $20 for an entire year! The HotAirBalloonist.com site is not only a very useful site for ballooning, but it is easy to use and a great benefit to ballooning in general and worthy of your support! GET INVOLVED, GET A MEMBERSHIP, and help us help ballooning. WHO ARE WE? Some of you know me and many may not. My name is Jeff Thompson. I live in Florida. I have just shy of 7,000 flights and about 5800 flight hours. I am a BFA level DA-8 on the PAAP (pilot achievement award program) I am also an Ed Yost Master Pilot award recipient. I had my pilot’s certificate before I had a driver’s license for a car. I purchased my first balloon in 1976 and took my parents Jim and Connie Thompson for their first flight at the age of 17 years old. I have been a member of the BFA since 1977. You may ask why I am telling you this. I love, live and breathe ballooning. I want to leave this sport better off than when I came into it. I created the HotAirBalloonist.com site so we could all work together and share our talents, passion, experiences and tricks, tips and failure’s together for the benefit of all. Unlike other ballooning sites HotAirBalloonist.com is user interactive. What I mean by this is that YOU a member can post things for others. WE CAN ALL SHARE with our fellow balloonists and talk about the things we need. Not only can you share our opinion, but you can share files, presentations, photos, and more for others to view and learn from YOU. We are creating a HUGE database of knowledge accessible by all balloonists for all our benefit. I know each newsletter I ask over and over for you to become a member. Please understand that I have personally funded this site for a very long time out of my own pocket. RIGHT NOW we are preparing packages for safety seminars all over the country. The dollar value of the items we are donating is in the thousands! Is it too much to ask that you get a pilots membership for $45 a year? (Thank you to those who have) How about a general membership for $20 a year? There are dozens and dozens of useful features built into HotAirBalloonist.com and more being added all the time. Get your crew a membership for $20 a year! The site has thousands of features and files. We were presented a BFA Directors award for our work with the BFA Hall of Fame committee. Soon you will be able to view the Notables category the HOF uses to select the nominations for the Ballooning Hall of Fame. There is simply something for everyone on the site. Go to the store, select a membership and support HotAirBalloonist.com, please. Fly safe As always I am available Jeff A Thompson. info@hotairballoonist.com 407-421-9322

Merry Christmas Everyone As another year comes to a close we wanted to say Merry Christmas to all. Please be safe and enjoy this wonderful time of year. Life goes so very quickly, take every opportunity to make a few special memories with those we may not see often. Take the time to tell those who are in your everyday life what they mean to you as well. For those who will fly on Christmas Day. Get a bunch of bells and fly low over the houses and ring the bells as hard as you can. Practice yelling “HO HO HO” as loud as you can. For those who have snow! Land in someone yard and cool the balloon down. Have someone get out one side of the basket and make a snow angel. Then climb back in and get out the other side and use your feet to make a bow. Then take off and look back. You just created a Christmas gift and a snow angel with no tracks to or from it. (It’s a balloonist form of crop circle) Hope you all get what you want this year and remember that “Every DAY is a gift” ATTENTION LAST MINUTE SHOPPERS, You can go to the store on HotAirBalloonist.com and get a gift card. You can choose any amount or you can give someone a membership to the site. See you all in “18” Jeff A Thompson

HI Everyone. I hope you are all doing well. Lots of items to cover in this newsletter so please bear with me on the length of this. Hopefully you will gain some great information. Winter Flying. One of the things I miss living here in Florida are those Frozen Flights from up north. The earth covered in a fresh blanket of snow and the extreme visibility of that cold clear air, are simply amazing. BUT there are a few items you should keep in mind. We have written an article with some tips and created a poll for you to take in our Balloon Owners & Operators category. Look in the Winter Flying forum. (REMEMBER YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN TO SEE THIS CATEGORY) The “Balloon Owners & Operators” category is for members only. BFA to LINK to HAB. Many of you may know that the HotAirBalloonist.com site has an entire section set aside for the Hall of Fame committee. (If you did not know you know now!) HAB created category that is completely private just for the HOF committee to do its work when choosing the potential candidates for the National Balloon Museums “Hall of Fame” each year. There are several sub-categories and forums inside their section of the site. One of the forums is the Notable Balloonists Biographical Information forum. There has been great support for this section to be made available to all balloonists. Currently it is private for viewing only by the BFA Hall of Fame committee. During the general meeting in Albuquerque a motion was brought forward to make this section of the site public. That motion passed! Soon you will be able to see the Biographies that are currently on file. We hope that this will not only be used as an educational resource but it will also promote the submission of new information as well. We will let you know when this link has been posted on the BFA site and when the forum has been opened for public view in another newsletter. CLUBS & THE EXCHANGE So do you have a group of pilots and crews you hang with? Do you have a way to communicate with your local pilots? Ground Crews? Landowners? START A CLUB! Our new Club feature allows you to have your own site within the HAB site. Start a club with a fun name. Then invite your local pilots and crews to join. Create your own club calendar, Forums, Topics, Photo Galleries, Blogs and more.. Everyone in the club can use all the features of the HAB site and all the features within your club. Sound like too much work? Then use “THE EXCHANGE” This is a category with sub-categories for major areas around the country. Each exchange has 4 forums. 1) Pilots forum. 2) Crew forum. 3) Passenger Exchange. 4) Landowner Relations. The exchange can be found in the Balloon Rides category (you must be logged in) In BOTH the CLUB feature and THE EXCHANGE, members following will be sent an instant email of any topic posted. This means if you need crew you post a topic in the Crew Forum in your exchange and all the crew following will be notified. Post an event on your club calendar and all your club members get an email. This feature is included with your basic membership. Other programs like this charge as much as $20 a month and YOU are the only one who can send mail. The CLUBS feature and THE EXCHANGE allow all members to post new items and the system automatically sends out the emails for you! You are welcome to try the exchange on your own. Or call me and I will walk you around the features. START A CLUB TODAY and be instantly in touch with your area by tonight. SAFETY SEMINARS We are entering that time of year again. WE URGE ALL OF YOU to attend a safety seminar in your area. Every year the seminars get better and better. I don’t care how long you have been flying balloons you can learn something. Great discussion’s and new ideas are fantastic for all of us. If you are involved with a seminar anywhere this year please post in on the calendar. Log in and go to the calendar page. Click on the link “All Calendars” and a drop down menu of calendars will open. Select the safety seminar calendar and post your event. You can insert text and times and locations and links and contact information and more. If you do not want to try this for yourself just send the information to Info@HotAirBalloonist.com and we will post it for you. Or better yet call us and we will take you thru the process so you can edit and/or add to the event at any time on your own. Congrats to Mom and Dad. On a personal note. Those of you who know my parents will agree with me that they are true ballooning jewels. I am so proud of what they have done for me over the years and what they have done for the entire ballooning community. I was informed by the Awards Committee chairman that during the general meeting this year BOTH my parents would be receiving awards. Father won a directors award for his work with the HOF and my mother won the crew of the year award for more than 40 years of chasing three generations and four family pilots. I could not be happier for both of them. If you wish to read her nomination please click here Connie Thompson. You do not have to log into the site to see her nomination. EQUIPMENT for sale Don’t forget we have a complete category for Equipment for sale. If you have stuff you want to sell POST IT! THERE IS NO FEE! Go on the site and register as a guest. Then go to the proper forum for the equipment you are selling and start a topic about your stuff. Don’t forget to click the FOLLOW button when you are done. This way if someone wants to ask you a question they can post it right on the site and you will get an instant email. Then you can answer the question and then add that information to your listing! When you have sold the equipment you can delete your topic with a couple of mouse clicks. Become a paid member. If you have not logged in lately you should! The site is growing every day. More and more great information is being added and new features all the time. The membership dues help pay for the site and the time it takes to keep it up. Please contribute. If you have forgotten your log in information you can use your email to retrieve the password or just send us an email at Info@HotAirBalloonist.com. Tell us the user name or email you had on the account and tell us what password you would like to use and we will reset it for you and send you an email. Your assignment. · Go read the article on cold weather flying. LOG IN AND CLICK HERE · Go take the poll on tank pressure. · Check out the Exchange feature found in the BALLOON RIDES category. · START A CLUB · Get your safety seminar listed. · Tell someone about the site and get them to join! All the best to everyone. Please fly safe. Jeff A Thompson

Well, we lived! Overall we were very fortunate . Many were not and our hearts go out to all whom have suffered devastation, loss and heartache in their life from this storm. We were affected and you can read all about our story here. http://hotairballoonist.com/forum/index.php?/index.html/equipment/post-irma-r49/ Once again we want to express our sympathy and prayers for those who have been severely affected by the hurricane. We experienced it first hand and have heart felt and real respect for your trialing times. New Banner Locations! Do you have a club? A Balloon Event? Even a product you want to promote. We have new banner locations and they are very inexpensive. For as little as $20 a month you can promote your product to thousands of balloonist and people interested in the world of ballooning. Just go the store and click on Banner Advertising. Select the placement were you would like your banner to be. The Banner Description area will explain the size and format your banner needs to be. The literally upload your banner and pay with a credit card and POOF you’re up and running. MAP FILES A HUGE thank you goes out to Rob Nutting for his contribution to our map files. Rob uploaded 14 map files from some very popular balloon events in the Midwest. They can be found in the Download center under the category “Launch and Land” map files. Once again I must point out one of the fantastic features of HotAirBalloonist.com is the Download Center. We all can share all sorts of files from historical records, How To manual’s, Guides, Forms and Documents as well as MAP FILES. It has long been our goal to be able to provide downloadable files for flying areas all over the United States. Many of these files can be downloaded directly into your device and used almost instantly. If you use the Hot Air App, TwoNav or Motion X you can download directly into your tablet and use the files in seconds. There are literally dozens of reasons to support this site and this one is one of the most compelling. Become a member and help us create a database for all pilots everywhere! Go on, Give it a try. There is no cost do download map files. Just remember to thank a paid member for your ability to do so. CLUBS We have talked about his before but I do not believe it has sunk in. Many of you are familiar with the Balloon Reflector. For those who are not it is a program that allows you to send out an email and the system then rebroadcasts that email out to hundreds of followers who then can comment back about that topic. It is a great way to stay in touch. It does have some drawbacks. You can’t send photos, you can’t review all the comments, (unless you save each email and go back and review one at a time) and a few other items. The NEW HotAirBalloonist.com “CLUBS” feature does all that and MORE. When you start a club you choose the type of club. Your club can be a Public (Open to everyone) Private (People must request your permission to join) or a CLOSED club (Only people you invite can join and NO ONE can see the club except your members. In each club you have the ability to create your own Forum of Topics, Gallery of images, Calendar of events, even a Download Center to share files. It’s like having a complete website with all the features you could want. BEST OF ALL every module of your club has the Follow Feature. On every item on the site has a follow button. Click on that button and you can follow that item. Just like the reflector you get an email when someone makes a new event or creates a new topic or any item you want to be notified about. So imagine you have a group of pilots in your area. You can create a club with your local pilots and crews. Then you can share events, files, Maps and more via your club. Post one topic about a sensitive land owner and everyone in your area gets an email! Think how valuable that could be. Imagine you need more crew or are heading to a balloon event and need more crew. Post a topic in your club and all your members get an instant email. If you are interested in this feature please give me a call. It is very hard to explain all the benefits in a newsletter. Going to the BIG ONE. Those of you old schoolers will understand “The Big One” I still have very fond memories of Sid. It’s better known as “Fiesta” or Albuquerque. This may sound funny but those of you who get these newsletters are some of the best. Many of you have been given memberships to HotAirBalloonist.com because of your contributions to the sport. Your contributions are what earned you a free membership. I have two things to ask of you. First tell people about the site. Talk about it while you are spending time with pilots and crews who may not be aware of HotAirBalloonist.com. AND YOU please support the site. If you get a membership in the store and use the Coupon code “BFA at checkout you get a HUGE 75% discount! Think about that. Surely you would contribute, a buck a month to this site? A ground crew membership is even less. Log in and purchase a membership then USE the new club feature! Use the download center to share or download maps. Currently members do not pay for any downloads in the Download Center. Just a couple of free downloads and you have paid for your membership. Sell your photos online! Learn the tricks to GoPro video on your flights and so much more. On a personal note. The hurricane Irma has hurt my ride business. Many of you know I foot the bill for HotAirBalloonist.com out of my own pocket and with my own time. I sure could use some support right now. Get a paid membership or make a donation of some sort. I have spent many years giving to the sport. I am now in a position to need some help from my friends and fellow balloonist’s. Please do not misunderstand, I am not asking for a handout. I honestly with all my heart believe that the benefits of a paid membership on HotAirBalloonist.com are an incredible value and way beyond the price paid. But it sure would be nice to see some support for the site. As a personal note I want to thank again Rob Nutting for his map file’s contribution to the site. Sure wish I could get other balloonists to follow his lead. Final Thoughts If you are going to Albequreque please fly extremely safe. Don’t take chances. Fly when you are comfortable and please please be sharp. Our industry NEEDS an incident free fiesta. You are all special for what you do and remember we ALL represent each other. FLY SAFE, Have fun. Jeff

Dear Friends and Fellow Ballooners Looks like the Thompson Compound (Our Home) is going to be in the Eye of (or very close to) Irma. We are prepared as much as we can. We have a generator that is wired into the home and will provide minimal electricity. Radio, TV, Lights, Fans and a few other small items. It is not strong enough for our AC or Well pump. (That Generator is on the way but will not get here till after the storm passes.) We have food, water, Radios, Batteries, Ice, Gas, Propane and more. My Parent’s Jim and Connie Thompson are also preparing at their home just two miles down the road with the assistance of my brother Jon Thompson. I lived here in this home when hurricane Charlie hit central Florida in 2004. The damage from that hurricane was amazing and pretty severe! We were without power for 7 days. Irma is several times larger and just as strong if not stronger, we are expecting 80 to 90 mile per hour winds for 6 to 8 hours. The worst part is that the brunt of the storm will pass here in the middle of the night. We will be able to hear the destruction happing but not know for sure till daylight what has happened. We received an email from our insurance company letting us know they are preparing and expecting 50 to 75 thousand claims just in our area. This is not a joke. I have a live weather station at my home. You can view it here. www.thompsonaire.com/TAweather.htm there is also a link for the ThompsonAire twitter account if you wish to follow our postings during the storm. I have also mounted GoPro cameras on the Radio/ Weather Tower here at the house. We will be posting short video clips as long as we can till we lose power or internet. The weather station is mounted at the top of the 50 foot tower and should provide great information till our power goes out. The weather station is live. It updates the information on the web every minute. The local power company will be shutting down the power ahead of the storm. This will be the first time they have done something like this but I do understand. When the trees come down and lines get shorted it blows the transformers. If the power is shut down the transformer does not explode. This way all they must do is clear the line and then fire back up the power. It will make things miserable during the storm but it should make power restoration much faster on the back side of the storm. Over the last few days we have heard from many of our ballooning friends and must tell you all that we are so very lucky to be part of such a wonderful community as the balloon world. THANK YOU ALL. Best wishes to all. If you are some of our past passengers or friends living here in Florida take this storm serious. Have a safe room in your home and make sure everyone knows where to go. Thank you! Jeff A. Thompson

Fall Foliage! This is a time of year I sincerely miss. Living here in Florida, we do not get the spectacular colors of the fall as you do in many places up north. The fall season is some of my favorite flying. I remember when flying in Michigan the fall color tours were a very busy time. That is also the time of year when the weather can be somewhat tricky as the cold fronts begin to invade from the north. I wish you all great flying weather, fantastic colors and most of all safe flights. Share a few photos with us on HotAirBalloonist.com CLUBS This is a new feature that is not well understood on HotAirBalloonist.com “Clubs” simply is a FANTASTIC addition and has great potential for EVERY MEMBER. As a member you can now start a club. Your club could be just you and your ground team, or if you want, the pilots and crews in your flying area or even friends across the country. For example: You and a couple of your pilot friends want to start a club. So you create a club. You choose the type of club! You can create one of 4 types of clubs, (public, open, closed or Private Club). You invite your pilot friends and their crews to join your club. Inside your club you can create several fantastic areas. You can create a forum for topics of discussion. You can create a photo gallery for your club. You can create a download center for file sharing and you can even create a club calendar! That’s right an online calendar just for your club. BEST OF ALL each of your new club areas include the “FOLLOW’ feature. This means that if each member of your club selects to follow a forum or a calendar the system will send them an instant email whenever something has been added! So you can enter an event on the calendar or post a new topic in your forum and the system will automatically send out emails! BOTTOM LINE, creating a club for your flying area or friends is a great way to keep in touch with local pilots and crews and share local information quickly and easily with just a few mouse clicks. Log in and take a look! DELETING A TOPIC Deleting a topic or any item you have started has now become much easier. One of the new additions to the site is the ability for any member to easily find all the items they have started. When you are logged in go to the menu bar at the top and mouse over “Activities & Interests” then click on “Content I Started” This will then pull up a list of all the activity associated with your account from the entire site. There are many items such as reply’s or Status Updates that you can delete directly from this page. Topics are also easy to delete. Just click on the topic. Just below the Topic Title over to the right you will find a gray link called “topic moderation” Just click on that link and hit delete. NEW NAVIGATION We have new and improved navigation on HotAirBalloonist.com. The top four navigation links are now mouse over links. This means you do not have to click on them. Just hold your mouse over them and the links will appear in the line below. By doing this we have made navigation quicker and allowed us to add even more items to the site. Have a look at the new navigation bar and the many new features and links. HALL OF FAME Do you know a noteworthy balloonist? Do you know someone who has made a huge impression on you in the world of ballooning? Do you know someone who could possibly be someone who is worthy of being in the National Balloon Museum “Hall of FAME”? Currently the Hall of Fame committee has 200 biographies on file but there are many more balloonists who deserve to be on that list. If you know someone whom you believe should be considered as a notable balloonist? Please help the Hall of Fame committee by providing information about a notable balloonist or someone involved in the world of ballooning whom you believe should have information preserved for future balloon enthusiasts. If you wish to see the names those on file navigate to the forum below. · Home · U.S. National Balloon Museum · Ballooning Hall of Fame · Notable Balloonists with Biographies ACTIVITIES & INTERESTS We have a new section on the site called Activities & Interests. This is where you will find a link to the new Club Feature on the site. If you mouse over the link “Activities & Interests” you will see many other new options. REMEMBER LOG IN… If you do not log in you will see very few options on the site. When you log in the site doubles in size. UPGRADE Our upgrade on the site is almost complete. We are still working on a few page layouts but for the most part the site is running well with all the new modifications. We have a few new pages in the works but will talk more about that in a future newsletter. We will be thinning the heard in the next few weeks. We have many members that have not logged in in a very long time or have never used the site. If we delete your account please remember you can always go back and create a new account. If you have the chance to log in in the next week or so please do. If you have forgotten your password just use the password recovery system on the site. MAPS! PLEASE PLEASE if you have a map of your flying area or if you are involved with a balloon event we want your files! We want to share them with all balloonists. There is a section in the Download Center just for map files. We would like to create a complete database of maps from all over the country and the world! Imagine how nice it would be to simply download a map from local pilots anywhere! Imagine the ability to avoid land owner relation problems just by providing a file for pilots who are unfamiliar with your area? PLEASE if you have files, help us achieve this goal. All for now! I know I get somewhat long winded in these emails. I hope you get some benefit from them and if you log into the site and find some benefit there then I have achieved my goal. HotAirBalloonist.com is meant to be a site where we can all participate, share, and benefit from the HUGE knowledge of balloonists like you, everywhere. You are receiving this email because you are a member. PLEASE PARTICIPATE. Fly safe and enjoy the cooler temps and beautiful vistas. Jeff A Thompson Fall Foliage.docx

Almost August! It’s been a while I have not sent out a newsletter in a couple of months. As some of you know we have done a complete revamp of the HotAirBalloonist.com site. This has consumed a bunch of my time and there is still more to go. When you get the chance have a look around. Remember LOG IN! If you go to the site and are not logged in you are considered a guest. A guest does not see the entire site. In fact a Guest is not viewing even HALF the site. So make sure you log in to see the entire site. START A CLUB We now have a new feature called simply “Clubs”. If you click on the Activities & Interest’s tab you will see the first link is called Clubs. This is a new area where you can start a club! You can create a club That is completely private or you can make a club that you invite members to join or you can create an open club for all. Within your club you can create a caleander, Club topics, Photo gallery and even share files with your club membership. This is a fantastic feature and one you should check out when you have a chance. Member Map We have even done an upgrade with the Member Map. We have included Calendar Events on the member map. When you place an event on the events calendar a pin will automatically appear on the member map. The member map is now scalable. If you click the small icon just below the +/- the map will become FULL SCREEN on your computer. The Markers on the map now contain links and other information so you can click directly to the item even if it is outside the HotAirBalloonist.com site. Activities and Interests This is another new area on the site. Here is where you will find the link to balloon clubs as well as other helpful links. On the Activities and Interests tab you will be able to find all the items you have created and topics you have started as well as find all the items you choose to follow in one place. There is also a very powerful search bar as well. If there is an item you once found that you want to find again this is where you would go to search for it. SUPPORT There is now a new support tab on the main menu bar. Here you can find staff, See who has been posting stuff, the leaders of the site as well as follow a specific member. The ability to follow a specific member is also another new feature. Also on the support tab you can see who is online. Generally at any given time there are about 30 to 40 people roaming the site. You can also see what members are online. Of course the Support Tab is where you would go to get support as well. Click on Support and start a new request. We want everyone to get the most out of the site so please if you have any problems submit a support request and let us help you. MOBILE READY! Did you know we now have a mobile ready version of the site? Go ahead and use your phone or tablet to go to HotAirBalloonist.com The site will automatically scale for your device. Using the site is easy on any device. LOG IN > LOG IN> LOG IN. REMEMBER most of this site is not viewable by a guest. More than half of this site is only viewable by members who are logged in! So when you have the time to visit the site please remember LOG IN. If you do not remember your password just click the sign in button and use the password recovery system. If all else fails just send us an email with your name and we will send you your account credentials so you can log in. New in the STORE There is now a tab on the store menu called “My Details”. Here is where you will find all your purchases, print receipts, manage purchases, put a credit card on file or change a card, shipping address and more. REMEMBER YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN to see this. That is the only way the system will know what information to access for your account. MAP FILES Once again we would like to ask if you are involved in a balloon event. Please provide your event maps. More and more pilots are using Phones and Tablets to fly with. We have a section in our Download Center just for maps. Currently we have maps loaded for the National Balloon Classic in Indianola Iowa. Pilots can go into the maps section and download files directly into their phone or tablet for use during the event. We would love to provide this service for other events too but, we can’t if you don’t give us the files. SO MUCH MORE There are so many new features I could go on and on but fortunately for all of us I need to start loading the van to go fly. REMEMBER this site is run by the Dues members pay. Once again THANK YOU to the members who help support this site. If you are not a paid member please at least get a “General Membership” it’s only $20 a year but helps us in so many ways. As always, All the best to you. Fly safe, have fun and if you need anything please drop us a note. Jeff Almost August.docx

Hi everyone. Each month I try to insert information that you the members of HotAirBalloonist.com will find helpful and interesting as well. The one thing I do keep asking is that if you have a FREE membership we sure would like you to become a paid member. Sites like HotAirBalloonist.com take time to keep up to date and effort to continue to add more content as well as, provide support for the public and the membership. We all know many balloon sites that have faded away, like Fireside, Everything Ballooning, Aunty Monkey and other sites like hotairballooning.com and Aerostatz that have become nearly stagnant in recent years. The big difference with HotAirBalloonist.com is that we have a private members side and a public side and the membership like YOU control the content. YOU can ask for anything you want to see on the site and we will make it happen. You also have the ability to log in and start new topics, upload equipment for sale, create a calendar event, spend some time in the chat room, Share files, photos, drawings and more with your fellow LTA aeronauts. Please if you are not a paid member become one. Tell your friends to get online and become a member. The word of the month for April 2017 is “Participate” CHECKLISTS Last month we touched on the need for using checklists. We have Pilot Checklists and Crew Checklists and even passenger pre-flight briefing cards available in the store. If there is ever a question about your procedures having a checklist is almost like insurance. It carries some weight as to your overall diligence as a pilot and your crew, for that matter. As we mentioned all of our checklists and briefing cards are customizable. WELL, We have gone one step better. We now have a form in our Download Center where you can download a file in Word Format. Open it up on your computer and you literally can fill in the blanks. You will find on the left side of the page is a sample. On the right side of the page are blank areas where you can write your own text. Honestly you can make a completely customized checklist for yourself in just minutes. Go to HotAirBalloonist.com and go to the Store. Click on the Pilots Flight Bag category and you will find the checklists. There are links to the download center in each product. You can also go to the Download Center and go to the Balloon Related Resources to find the downloadable files. How’s your BTU? Over the years the old debate about my burner is better than your burner and so on has gone on and on. Here is how you can rate your burner and how you can rate someone else’s burner. Next time you are at a balloon rally you can challenge your fellow pilots to do the same. Keep in mind this is not a perfect way to rate a burner but it’s pretty close and if done at the same location and at the same time you will get very comparable numbers. You can purchase a scale at any Walmart for under $20 that will measure to 10th’s of a pound. Propane has 21,600 BTU’s per pound. So, Take a tank of propane. Weigh it. Hook it up to your burner and light it up. Turn it on for 30 seconds. Now weigh the tank again. How much propane did you use? Let’s just say you used 3.9 pounds. So here is the formula, (UsageX2)X60= hourly usage. Hourly usage X 21,600 = BTU/HR 3.9 pounds of propane used in 30 seconds. X2 = a minute. So 7.8 pounds a minute. X60 = 1hr so 7.8X60 =468 pounds in an hour. 468 X 21,600 =10.1 Million BTU per hour. Now, Here are a couple of SERIOUS notes.. FIRST. Be protected. Hands, Arms, Head and your location! A 30 second burn is a very very long burn. Things are going to get hot and no pun intended. Make sure you are protected from the radiant heat and make sure bystanders are well back. Also make sure you are in a very open well ventilated area. We don’t want you setting the neighbors trees on fire. Make sure you light the burner. Believe it or not some burners are rated without lighting the burner. You know the expansion of liquid propane to a combustible vapor slows down the flow and lowers the BTU rating. The burner must be lit as if you were using it in flight to get a proper result. Doing this at a balloon rally will give you results on a level playing field (also no pun intended) since all the propane will be at the same temperature and you will be at the same altitude. Almost all smart phones have available applications for Decibel rating if you wish to measure that as well. GoPro and Ballooning. Many more pilots are now flying with GoPro and many more are thinking about it. We do have a presentation in our Download Center on GoPro and Ballooning. Go to the Video and Tutorials page and download the presentation for FREE. It is a great beginner’s guide to what you will want to have for using GoPro Video cameras in ballooning. One of the suggestions we have is using Ram Mounts. We have been using them for several years and they are fantastic. You will find photos and links to the products we use. Ram also makes a clamp on mount I used on my Father’s balloon works basket last summer and it worked fantastic. Many of the mounts can be used on Uprights, Burner Frames and Tanks as well. We will be writing an article for the Current Events page featuring many of the mounts we have tried over the years and what we think works best. We are also experimenting with an easy clamp on mast attachment so look for details on that coming soon. Tablet Flying. There are some fantastic programs available now for your tablet and for use while flying. Some of these programs can be used for competition and be much easier to use than the big clumsy Map Boards the Good ole boys use. We all have seen them, the big flat board where they have a laptop and cell phone and two GPS units and more with a clip for maps and so on. Some even have straps and different attachments to mount onto the basket. Some look like they could be used to torture the crew after the flight. There is a very nice power point presentation in the Download Center on Tablet Flying. It shows many of the programs that are out there and extremely useful for not only flight planning but inflight navigation as well. The Download is free so have a look when you have time. This presentation is also located in the “Tutorials & Presentations” category Pilots Goodie Bag. Some of you are involved in balloon events from a planner or organizer standpoint. At almost every balloon event the organizers are looking for things for the Pilots goodie bag. Don’t forget we have many items that would make great pilot gifts in our store. Many of them are only a few dollars. How about a Shoot-A-Lite sparker or a sighting compass. What about flashlights or custom checklists like we talked about above. What about custom ID badges for the pilot with a color photo of the balloon on the badge. What about Crew badges with the balloon photo on them. There are so many items available and best of all many can be customized for the participating pilot. HEY! What about a membership on HotAirBalloonist.com? Give us a call and we can work out special pricing for your event. Heck we would even print up a special membership card for them to find in their goodie bag. Well there is no doubt I have rambled on way to much again. Honestly it is my sincere hope that you enjoy these newsletters each month. Please patronize our sponsors and if you have a product or service you would like to promote remember we offer banner advertising all over the site and many memberships allow you to upload items in the 4Sale section of the site. Remember this site was built for YOU! Tell us what you think. Imagine if each of you started a topic about something or asked a question on the site or uploaded a file or drawing or presentations of some sort, how quickly we would have a HUGE resource for future balloonists. Remember your local map files are wanted in the Download Center! The summer festival season is on us! Please fly safe and have fun but make your own choices! Jeff A Thompson. April 2017.docx

Have you been to a seminar? We encourage everyone who is part of a balloon team to take the time to go to a continuing education seminar at least once per year. Many of you who live in colder climates have friends and families who share the camaraderie of ballooning and don’t see those friends over the winter months. The safety seminars are a great way to not only learn and expand your knowledge of many aspects of the world of ballooning but a great time to see old friends and find out about their seasonal plans. Plus it’s a great way to hear some new stories and relive a few old ones. I was a presenter this year at the Iowa Balloonists association seminar this year and boy do I have a story. You can find it on HotAirBalloonist.com/forum on the Current Events page. “It’s just a trip to Iowa” 2017 HALL OF FAME. Becky from the balloon museum asks if I would include this in our next newsletter. I told her of course I would. Becky and I have been ballooning together since 75. From Becky Wigeland and the National Balloon Museum: Sunday, July 30th, 2017 the National Balloon Museum will be inducting three Ballooning Pioneers into the US Ballooning Hall of Fame. The Pioneers are David Levin, Steve Fossett, and Professor T.S.C. Lowe of the Civil War Balloon Corp. Kevin Knapp, who is famous for his portrayal of Professor Lowe will be at the museum Saturday and Sunday telling his story. The Museum will be open 9:00-4:00 during the Classic week. Sunday from 12:00-4:00 will be Open House and Free admission. The Hall of fame Inductions will be from 1:00-3:00. The Public is welcome. Come and learn about the importance of ballooning in the Civil War. Can you hear me now? I had an interesting call the other day from a interpreter service for a deaf person. They wanted to go for a balloon ride. Since we have printed and laminated pre-flight briefing cards I did not see much of a problem. I thought to myself, I may want to make a set for landing in the balloon, but other than that I saw no real problem with the request. Then they said that they wanted an interpreter. My response was that I was unsure even how to go about getting one. The response I received back was “You are required to by law” Of course any time you hear that it will get your attention. My response was “I will look into it and see what I can do”. So the first thing I did was post something on the reflector to see if anyone out there had experience. I received many responses but not much help. The best response was from a pilot who will remain notorious who said. “SPEAK UP, I CANT HEAR YOU” Thanks Bubba C. Anyway here is what I found out. Aircraft are exempted. Apparently the airlines had a great lobbyist in Washington at the time. The law says that it must be readily achievable. Quote from the law. Readily achievable means easily accomplishable and able to be carried out without much difficulty or expense. In determining whether an action is readily achievable factors to be considered include – (1) The nature and cost of the action needed under this part; (2) The overall financial resources of the site or sites involved in the action; the number of per-sons employed at the site; the effect on expenses and resources; legitimate safety requirements that are necessary for safe operation, including crime prevention measures; or the impact other-wise of the action upon the operation of the site; https://www.ada.gov/regs2010/titleIII_2010/titleIII_2010_regulations.pdf Here are some of the problems I have. · Time of day, 5:30am to 8:30am · If the interpreter stays on the ground while we fly then we are paying for someone to do nothing for an hour while we fly. · If we take them in the balloon we have to find an interpreter who is willing to fly in a balloon. · If we fly them in the balloon we will have to pay for that seat in the balloon. · The cost of the interpreter is more than we will make on the flight and the next 3 flights plus the additional cost of flying the interpreter. · You may deduct the cost from taxes after the first $250.00, so @ $65 per hour X 4hrs I get to deduct a whole $10.00. · If the weather is bad we will be charged for the interpreter since their cancellation time frame is long before we will know if the weather is going to be good. We get our weather information about 12 hours before flight time and we have to cancel 25 hours in advance. So there is no way for us to cancel the service by the time we find out if the weather is going to be good or bad. There are also days when we go out to fly and the weather that morning becomes un-flyable due to increased winds and or fog and poor visibilities. · If we do not take them in the balloon this also causes some concerns if the weather gets unpredictable while we are flying. Because we are at the mercy of Mother Nature not being able to communicate if the weather turns bad is a serious safety issue. This makes choosing the weather conditions even more critical. · The close proximity of passengers in a balloon makes visual communication difficult at best. Imagine 4 people in a phone booth trying to sign. On a follow up call with the passengers I told them that the cancellation policy of the interpreter service was long before I would know if the weather was going to be good and there would be no way to cancel the service by the time I knew if we were going to fly. This seemed to be a reasonable answer to the question and they agreed. I promised that we would have plenty of printed materials and an iPad and paper and pencil on board for communication. I will be writing an article with all the information involved. This article will be posted on the HotAirBalloonist.com/forum website on the “Current News” page. Post your event! We have a calendar for balloon events on the HotAirBalloonis.com site. If you are involved in a balloon event or know someone who is we want to talk to you/them. Our calendar not only allows you to post your event but you can also place your entire schedule, applications, website, email, contact person, phone and MORE about your event. The best part is all of this is user controlled. One of the most fantastic features of HotAirBalloonist.com is that YOU the member can post all of this stuff on your own. YOU the member can also go back and alter, add, delete anything you have posted! So give us a call or send us an email. We will set up a time where we can allow you to log into OUR computer screen and we will walk you around the site and SHOW YOU HOW to use it right from the comfort of your own computer. CHECKLISTS Once again the use of checklists has been talked about by the FAA and some presenters at the safety seminars. Checklists are a good thing. There are several types of checklists you may have or use. A Pilot Checklist for Pre-Flight. A Pilot Checklist for landing. What about a pre-flight checklist for crew or passengers. How about a checklist for landing for passengers. YES HAB has checklists available in the store. These are customizable to your own list. They are printed on 80 mil PVC cards. The same card stock that credit cards are printed on. They are weather proof, water proof, scratch resistant and more. You can order them with a bull nose clip for your lapel or you can order them with a suitcase style strap to attach to a tank or hang over the mirror in your chase vehicle. They can be ordered easily online and we produce them in house so the turnaround time just hours. Go to the store on HotAirBalloonist.com and click on the “Pilots Flight Bag” product category and have a look at the sample checklists. Then order your own. Welcome New Sponsor’s, HotAirBalloonist.com is happy to welcome two new banner sponsors to the site. Our first new sponsor is “Desired Dreams” They make homemade items for the home. The make Bath Bombs, Candles, Wax Melts and Shower Bombs. These items will make your home smell fantastic and they even have a line of Bath Bombs for MEN! Check them out by clicking on their banner on the site when you see it. Our next new sponsor on the site is Windsond. I have talked about this at a couple of safety seminars. Windsond makes reusable wind sensors. You attach them to a helium balloon and let them go and they relay back to your computer real time information about wind speeds, direction and altitude and more. Easier and more accurate than the old theodolite and RE-USEABLE. When you have a chance, please click on their banner or do a web search for Windsond and check them out. Ride Operators have you created your listing yet? Why not? It only takes a few moments and you can have a customized topic all about your rides. Remember we have operators listed all over the country by state. Go to the rides page and click on IOWA. Then click on Tecvisions Balloon Rides. This is a topic that Tim Cloyd just created for himself. Feel free to send him a note and ask how hard it was. We want everyone to be listed so the general public can find you instead of going to a ticket seller. Please if you have not created a topic about your operation take the time to contact us and let us help you do so. You are receiving this email because you are a member on the site so you most likely already have the permissions to create a topic for yourself. PLEASE DO! All the best to everyone. Thank you to the IBA for having me at their seminar. Please fly safe. Jeff A Thompson. See you next month. March2017.docx

WOW BILL SMITH, I don’t know how many of you followed his amazing flight back on the 9th. I saw at least one photo of him passing overhead of some balloonists who were obviously paying attention to his flight path. WOW what a flight! Best guess 751.46 miles give or take a few feet. Thanks go out to Brian Beazly for giving us a heads up on the reflector. At times he was traveling more than 90 miles an hour and over 14 THOUSAND feet up, then to come back to earth for a landing with less than 10 mph winds on the surface. WOW. Congratulations Bill Smith and his support team! We would love to hear the story about the flight! HotAirBalloonist.com is looking for your help! Yes you! We are looking for FILES. You may ask what kind of files. ALL KINDS. On HotAirBalloonist.com we have a download center. We already have hundreds of files in our download center but we are looking for more. This is where you can help. Do you have a ground crew manual, a Student Pilot syllabus? Do you have a Tether contract, Passenger Release, Banner contracts? Do you have Drawings, specifications, files of any kind that would be useful to other balloonists? We want them. MAP FILES! GPX files, Balloon event maps, KML files anything you think that another balloonist may have a use for. UPLOAD THEM! You will find several categories in the Download Center where you can upload files. Select the category that best fits your file and upload if for others. WAIT you say you want to get paid for your files… That is fine too! If you have a Equipment Sellers membership, A Ride Operators membership or an Event Organizer membership you may upload files for purchase. Upload your file and then set the price at any amount you like. If you need help just let us know. If you have a file of some sort that you believe other Balloonist’s could use but you do not see a category for it let us know. That is the nice part of this site, we can customize it any way we want. From the Balloonist Hall of Fame committee. NOTABLE BALLOONIST’S BIOGRAPHIES The name of Robert Rechs may not be recognized by many current balloonists; however, he is notable for a number of different reasons. He was the recipient of the first Shields Trauger award presented by the Balloon Federation of America in 1970. He is probably best known for being the author of Who’s Who of Ballooning, a compilation of data on historically-significant aeronauts. In the book’s preface Rechs states “If I can leave any legacy for future generations, it is to admonish all aeronauts to make a special effort to collect and preserve historical information on ballooning. Not just antique books and artifacts, but this present era too. Don't hoard your collection of data or knowledge; preserve it, and make sure that, when you expire, your efforts go to your NATIONAL BALLOON MUSEUM for preservation, assimilation, and availability to future generations.” The BFA Hall of Fame Committee has initiated the process to collect biographies or biographical information on historically-significant balloonist to preserve the history of our sport. We are asking for your help. At the 2011 Balloon Federation of America National Convention in Des Moines, a list of notable balloonist was developed and about 80 in attendance were recognized as part of ballooning history. This list included balloonists who were identified in about 18 different areas. The BFA Hall of Fame Committee, in their search for biographies have consolidated the list into the following categories: · Ballooning Accomplishments/Contributions · Montgolfier Diploma Recipients · Ballooning Development · BFA Past Presidents · Ed Yost Master Pilot Award Recipients · National and World Records Holders · CIA Hall of Fame Inductees · Shields Trauger Award Recipients We would encourage all balloonists to submit biographical information on present or past balloonists, pilots, crews and other participants, so that our history can be improved and preserved. The BFA Hall of Fame Committee is coordinating that initiative. Please send ballooning biographies, including balloon adventures, accomplishments, etc, so they are recorded for history. If possible, include photos of the person, and photos to add more detail to the bio. Said information can be sent to Jim Thompson, a member of the BFA Hall of Fame Committee, at jim@thompsonaire.com Also, if there is a balloonist that you want the Hall of Fame Committee to add to the biographies considered annually as potential candidates for induction into the BFA Hall of Fame at the National Balloon Museum, please complete a Candidate Information Form that can be found on the www.bfa.net under the awards category. Submit all biographical information and candidate information forms to the BFA Office. Information received will be catalogued by the Hall of Fame Committee and will continue the efforts of Robert Reich’s legacy for future generations of our special sport. WE HAVE THE NTSB Hearing. We now have the entire NTSB hearing available for viewing on HotAirBalloonist.com Log in, scroll down the topics page till you find the FAA category. Inside the FAA category you will find several Sub-Categories. Click on the Odds and Endless Sub-Category and you will find a topic called NTSB Hearing on Lockhart Texas. Click on this topic and you will be able to view the video. Thanks go out to Jeff Haliczer for getting us the video on USB. IT WONT BE LONG, before many pilots start the flying season. Please take the time to look over your gear, Make some checklists. Things cannot go as planned if there is no plan. HAB has customizable checklists available in the store. Become a member. Fly safe and have fun. Jeff A Thompson Feb 2017.docx

Have you taken our poll? We recently conducted a poll with questions regarding the ballooning accident in Texas back in July of last year. You are welcome to log in (you must log in) and take the poll yourself. We will publish the results at a later time. We do ask that only Pilots take the poll so we can keep the results as pure as possible. If you are not a pilot, but are interested in the results just scroll to the bottom of the poll and click on the “view results Null Vote” button. To take the poll, first, log in. Then go to the “Hot Topics” category. Click on the “Walkie Talkie” sub-category and the topic with the poll will be the first one on the list. In the Headlines. Did you know that one of the crew members for the Texas balloon incident has died? Don’t forget we have a page called Current Events. On this page there is a news scrubber that scans the headlines all over the world for items that are balloon related. On the current events page scroll down to the “Ballooning in the Headlines” section and you will see the headlines of balloon related events. Just click on them to find out more. Don’t forget to check in now and then to see Ballooning in the Headlines. Seminar Season. Please remember we have a calendar for Safety Seminars. We sure would like to have your seminar listed. Send all your details to Events@HotAirBalloonist.com and we will list your seminar! Send as much information as you like, send event information, times, speakers, pricing, and all your contact information such as phone, Email, Website URL or Hyperlink. Remember you can also upload your event application or registration so that anyone can download right from the site. Remember if you have an Event Organizers Membership YOU can create events yourself on both the Balloon Events calendar and on the Balloon Seminars calendar. When you place an event on the calendar you may include Photos, contact information with Email Links and Hyperlinks as well as upload application forms and all the descriptive text you want. Best of all you may go back and edit at any time. I am excited to be making the trip from Florida to Iowa to speak at the Iowa Balloonists Association’s seminar on February 25th. The group of pilots there holds a very special place in my flying history. I am very proud and humbled to be a presenter this year. NEW IN THE STORE. We have added several new items in the online store. Some of these items are discounted for our membership. Here are a few of the new items. Shoot A Lite strikers. We made a special purchase and are able to offer them to our members for only $10 each. They are normally found on the web for almost twice that. Basket Wedding Decorations. Those of you who may do weddings in your balloon now and then may want to take a look at this. These Velcro onto your basket and are reusable for years. They are custom made for your basket! Best of all you can fly with them and there is no need to make any alterations to your basket. Tank Stickers. New regulations may require you to have these on your tanks to refuel the balloon. Thanks go out to Sam Parks, Phil Bryant and Andy Baird and the BFA for their involvement protecting us from potentially harmful new regulation in the propane world. We have PI-Bal lights! We have been using them for a few years now for our pre-dawn wind observations. Inside a 12” yellow balloon you can spot them several thousand feet up. We have packages of 30 lights available for about 42 cents per light. Below is what Mike Shrum would call a SHAMLESS PLUG. Paid Memberships. The HotAirBalloonist.com site runs because of the paid memberships. There are many items offered for free to our membership. We have been working hard to create new features, find new products, and upload useful files and presentations. This along with the additional content and the ability for the members to interact with the site and each other make it a great marketplace and resource for all of us. Please read this carefully and think about it. If you are a BFA member you can become a Pilot Member of the HAB site for as little as $11.25 A YEAR! You realize that is less than ONE DOLLAR a month! Why would you not do that? The FREE items for download alone will pay for your membership. Download a Tether contract and the Hot Air App tutorial and you have paid for your membership. If you are a BFA member and you do passenger flights you can get a Ride Operators Membership for $12.50 A YEAR or ONE DOLLAR and FOUR CENTS a month! A Ride Operator can create their own custom advertisement on the Rides Page where they can advertise their rides. They may create their topic with all the photos, text, links, emails and pricing. They can also sell photo of their passengers in the Download center. Here again Why would you not do this? Sell one ride and you have paid your membership for a year! We currently have more than 350 operators listed on our rides page. We will be going down the list to try to verify the operations and get current information. Help us help you by getting a membership and then creating your own advertisement for yourself. Then we will delete the one we have on the site. As we have mentioned in previous newsletters the site does many great things for the balloon world. If you have been given a free membership or have a Registered Guest membership we respectfully ask that you chip in a buck a month and upgrade to a paid membership. Then enjoy all the amazing benefits a paid membership has as well as supporting the site. There is a step by step tutorial on how to get the special BFA membership in the Download Center. If you would like a guided tour of the site and an explanation of many of the dozens and dozens of features the site has built in already just let me know. I am working on the site almost daily. I work very closely with the BFA Hall of Fame committee who use the site for their files and the selection process. The Hall of Fame committee has a complete category for their use in total privacy within the HotAirBalloonist.com site. We were awarded a BFA Directors award for our work with the HOF Committee last fall at the general meeting. Just send me a note and let me know what time would be good for you and I will log you into the site thru my computer so we can see the same computer screen at the same time while I show you around the site. Just send me an email Info@HotAirBalloonist.com Do you have a Balloon Club? We can create a complete PRIVATE section on HotAirBalloonist.com just for your club. No need to maintain a website of your own. You can have complete section all private just for your club while still being able to access all the other features of the HAB site. Newsletters can be sent with a couple of mouse clicks to all your membership. Conduct Polls, Have Photo Galleries, Create topics where you entire club can comment. The system will even send out emails automatically to your club members each time someone creates a new topic or replies to any previous topic. Have more interaction among your club than you ever imagined. Call for more details on this special feature of HotAirBalloonist.com Thank you all for your support for HotAirBalloonist.com. If there are features you would like to see added or types of files or items in the store let us know. Remember send your event listing (Festival, Competition or Seminar) to Events@hotairballoonist.com Please get out there and go to a seminar if you can. They are a great way to brush up on your skills. See friends you may not have seen in a while, show your support for our balloon community and heck you might learn something. All the best to everyone and please fly safe and have fun. Jeff A Thompson Info@HotAirBalloonist.com 407-421-9322 Jan 2017.docx

I always enjoy this time of year. I try to make sure to take the time and remember just how fortunate we are. I am also glad when we get to spend a little more time with our families. I sincerely hope that all of you were able to spend some family time over the Thanksgiving holiday. I also hope that you will have another opportunity to spend even more time over the Christmas holiday and the holiday season as well. May you be surrounded by those you love and those who love you! Some of you have SNOW! I remember back when I used to live in the Mid-West we used to have our eyes glued to the windows when the first snow falls came. We always hoped it would be a big one and that we would wake up with everything covered in white. If you get a few good photos of a heavy snowfall share them in the photo gallery for all to see. Winter also brings another season for balloonists. The “SSS” or Safety Seminar Season. Please remember that HotAirBalloonist.com has a calendar dedicated to the Safety Seminars! If you are putting on a seminar or know of one please let us know. Send us a link or details about your seminar so we can post the information for others. Seminar information can be sent to Events@HotAirBalloonist.com Stocking Stuffers. Yes it is that time of year! Cyber Sunday or Black Monday or Clash of the titans Friday. I just don’t do that sort of stuff BUT! HotAirBalloonist.com has a few things in the store that your favorite pilot or crew member could use or may just enjoy. Shoot-A-Lite sparkers are a great item! Always welcome in any pilots flight bag. We have them in stock and ready to ship. Members can log in and use the coupon code “needfire” at checkout to get them at a fantastic price of just $10/ea. Pilots Sighting Compass. We also have our HAB compass on sale in the Pilots Flight bag category of the store. These sighting compasses are Lightweight, accurate and extremely inexpensive, a must for every pilot or ground crew. Think about getting two! Checklists. We have customizable (Pilot) and (Crew) checklists in the store at HotAirBalloonist.com. Made from 80mil PVC (Same material credit cards are made from) they will last for years. Waterproof and UV resistant you can put one in the basket and carry one in the chase vehicle. These checklists are inexpensive enough you may purchase a couple for your pilot and for all your crew. See the samples on the web and then create your own list! Send your custom checklist to us and we will create your checklist! HAB Gift Vouchers! Not sure what your favorite Pilot or Crew wants? Give a gift voucher from HotAirBalloonist.com! HAB Gift Vouchers are available in the store in amounts from $5 to $150. You can even select your own amount. Purchase and send via Email instantly online to anyone. A $10 gift voucher will give a ground crew a membership on HotAirBalloonist.com for an entire year! Send a $50 gift voucher to your favorite pilot and let them use it in the store for item(s) of their choosing, or apply to a membership. A “Super Easy” way to give a little something to anyone. There is even a tutorial on how to redeem a gift voucher in the download center under the Tutorials and Presentations category. Balloon Ride Gift Certificates. This year we are doing something a little different for Christmas Gift Certificate sales. We still offer the traditional Balloon Ride Certificate but…..We are offering a $50 voucher! We suggest that someone may purchase the voucher and give it to someone you know wants to take a balloon ride. This way an individual can help someone take a balloon ride without having to foot the entire bill! To see how we have this set up please visit http://www.thompsonaire.com/GCert.htm if you would like us to set up something like this for you, give us a call right away or email us at Jeff@HotAirBalloonist.com and we will explain how the system works. We can have you set up and ready to sell your Ride Certificates and Gift Vouchers online in minutes. Winter Flying! Remember winter flying can be fantastic but you must remember it also takes some preparation and some extra awareness on the part of the pilot and crew. We will talk more about that in our next newsletter. In the meantime REMEMBER if you have a seminar planed we want to know about it! PLEASE! We want to make this information available to anyone and everyone. We hope that you get to spend time with your family this holiday season. All the best to your family from ours, may your holiday be rich with laughter and love. Jeff A Thompson. Lake Gifford Florida. (Right behind Animal Kingdom) December 2016.docx

The Registered Guest Membership. (Sorry about the length but please read all of this) Back in the June HAB newsletter we mentioned that we would be ending or altering the Registered Guest membership. We went on to say that we were receiving spam attacks and new “registered guests” that had nothing to do with the balloon world. Our only recourse was to make the Registered Guest a TRIAL membership good for only 30 days. We made it clear that if you had a Registered Guest membership that you would be receiving an invoice for a general membership when the Registered Guest membership expired. That system is now fully implemented and we are happy to say that the spam memberships and hackers have ended. We did however get an email from someone who was upset with us because they had received an invoice. This is what we said would be happening in the June newsletter. The comment was made that there are others who do things for the balloon world without charging a fee, why don’t we follow that model? Now on the surface that is a great question. Especially if you do not know what HotAirBalloonist.com actually does for the balloon world! We do more for free than any other balloon site on the net. Here are a few of the items and benefits that are available and FREE on HotAirBalloonist.com · You may become a Registered Guest on the site for FREE. · A Registered Guest can list equipment for sale in the 4Sale category for FREE. · The 4Sale category allows you to edit your advertisement. Change the text, add more photos, change your price, enter email links and even DELETE your equipment listing YOURSELF! (No other website has that ability) YES FREE. · A Registered Guest can ask question by making a “Reply” to anything listed in the 4Sale Category AT NO COST! · There are event calendars and Safety Seminar calendars with information, contacts and links to these events. FREE on the site. · There is a Chat Room open 24/7 where you can get together with other balloonists and talk. FREE · There are ballooning articles for FREE and even more articles available for members. · There is a web scrubber that finds and posts any news worldwide about ballooning. FREE. Next time you hear about a balloon event or incident go to the “Current Events” page and scroll down to “Ballooning in the Headlines” and you will see it there! O did we say FREE? · The Download center has dozens and dozens of files available for download. There are many files that are FREE. Briefing cards, Propane guides, Fan Blade Pitch Guides, Release forms seminar presentations and MORE… All the files are FREE to members! · HotAirBalloonist.com has DONATED Identification Badges for each child at the BFA Balloon Camps for the last TWO Years! · HotAirBalloonist.com provided professional sighting compass’s to the kids camps at cost! · HotAirBalloonist.com DONATED over 1600 competition markers to balloon events! (Value of about $6,000) · HotAirBalloonist.com gives a FREE Membership to each of the BFA Elected officials and the Board of Directors. This membership allows them to use all areas of the site with Moderator Permissions. · HotAirBalloonist.com has an interactive map called the Member Map where you can find Balloon related services all over the United States. There are over 800 pins in the map, YES FREE for anyone to use. · We have over 370 balloon ride operators listed so the public can find a real balloonist to get a ride from instead of a third party ticket seller. FREE. · HotAirBalloonist.com hosts a complete category and download center for the BFA Hall of Fame. 100’s of files are stored and the entire committee can work in complete privacy. HAB was awarded a BFA Directors Award for its work with the BFA HOF Committee. · HotAirBalloonist.com created a complete power point presentation on how to use the HotAir App from Shawn Gano. It was offered to the first 50 downloaders FREE · HotAirBalloonist.com has invested several thousand dollars in bulk purchases so we can provide balloon supplies at a fantastic low price to balloonists like our professional sighing compass for only $22.50 or Shoot a lite sparkers for $10! Do you need more? I honestly could go on and on, this is just a small list of things. SO YES we do offer MORE FREE benefits, services and the ability to interact than any other ballooning site we know of. At this point the Balloon world has benefited from HotAirBalloonist.com to the tune of over $15,000. The balloon world has also benefited from the several thousands of hours invested in creating and managing such a site. Every day we work on adding even MORE. BUT there are costs. We do charge a membership fee. Paid members gain even more privilege’s and find huge areas of the site they did not know were even there! We have tried to create value that goes beyond the cost of a membership. We have also kept the cost as low as possible. Do you think that 83 cents a month is too much to ask for a Pilot Membership? LESS than what most pay for a cup of coffee! Let’s talk about the Membership Fees. A Ride Operators Membership is only $50 a YEAR. This membership has dozens of features but the most beneficial is you can create your own advertisement in the Balloon Rides category! If you make just one booking you have paid your membership for a year! Want to know something really silly? If you are a BFA member you can get this membership for $12.50 a year. YES you read that right a whole twelve dollars and fifty cents. A standard pilot membership is $40 a year but a BFA member can get a Pilot Membership on the site for $10. Why would you not do that? Remember as a member ALL the files in the Download Center are FREE. That alone will pay for your membership! Since we do not talk about all the great things that the HotAirBalloonist.com site does we thought you may want to get a little insight into this fantastic site. If you are not a paid member PLEASE become one. Click here to see what the site can do. Click here for Descriptions of Memberships. I am sorry for the length of this newsletter. I just wanted people to know some of the stuff we are working on and some of the items that are FREE on the site. I remember years ago when many would say “Why join the BFA, What do they do for me?” But after the incident in Texas the BFA has kept the FAA out of your life! We are supporters of the BFA and that is why we hold a Pilots Membership, Competition Membership and TWO, yes Two Corporate memberships with the BFA. No one else does that either! We want to promote the BFA and not compete with them. That is why we offer a 75% discount on HAB memberships for BFA members. HotAirBalloonist.com is worthy of your support. If you need help getting one or setting up your Balloon Ride Operation advertisement just call us. 407-421-9322 I am a balloon pilot just like you. I have over 5,500 LTA hours and fly rides, I am an Ed Yost Master Pilot, I am a DA-8 with the BFA pilot achievement program. I am more than willing to answer your questions and to give you any help you need. Please help me create a place where we can all share our knowledge and work together to promote all aspects of the balloon world. There is a place here for you! As always, all the best to all my ballooning friends Have fun and be safe. Jeff. Nov 16.docx

Here in Florida June represents the beginning of Hurricane season. We have been lucky the last few years and hope this year is a mild one as well. Never the less it is also when our mornings become flyable at close to 95% of the time. Barring a tropical storm or hurricane it is not uncommon for us to fly 28 or 29 times a month from now till October. We want to remind everyone PLEASE FLY SAFE! Be smart and when you get that funny feeling in the pit of your stomach LISTEN TO IT! When you are flying and you need to get down please choose a safe spot. Sometimes the urge to “Get Down” overrides our instinct for safety. If you do land in a very public place (you know what we mean) stay around and do some PR. Do not let the neighbors and the news guy write the story about your balloon crash or emergency landing. Be smart about what you say. Tell them something like this, “The landing was planned and executed precisely as expected”. “It was unforeseen that the winds would change and not allow us to continue onto another location”. “The location was chosen because it was a safe location to make a landing and we did exactly that, landed safely”. Let’s all work together this year to, first fly safe and secondly put a good face on our activities and not let the press sensationalize us. The End of the Registered Guest. Recently we have had several people registering as a guest on the site, whom are not in the balloon world or related balloon business at all. As a Registered Guest they have privileges on the site that could be used for undesired activities. We have already dealt with several spam attacks and other unwanted incursions to the site. It is our intent for the site to continue to be of service to the balloon world. We also want the site to be a great resource for the general public who are looking for balloon related services. It is our desire at this time to have only balloon related content. At this point we have decided to limit the membership “Registered Guest” to only a 30 day trial. This is more than enough time for a genuine balloonist to try out the site and decide to become a member. If you are a balloonist and you wish to help promote this site please become a General Member of the site. A General Membership is only $20 a year. If you are a balloonist and you purchase a General Membership by the end of June we will give you your choice of a set of HAB stickers for your vehicles or a customized Checklist for your ground crew. If you have a registered guest membership you will be receiving an invoice in the next few weeks asking you to pay a $2 per month fee to continue your membership on the site. If you are involved with the balloon world in any way we would like to thank you in advance for your support. BTW, a General Membership will give you more privileges than a Registered Guest Membership. GoPro and Ballooning There is a wonderful power point slide show available in the Download section of HotAirBalloonist.com about using a GoPro on your balloon flights. We have been using them for almost two years now with tremendous success. We actually paid for three complete GoPro setups in our first month of using them. We have created a step by step slide show on everything we do, from the equipment you need to the inflight use and even the storage of the files and the system for recalling a video from 8 weeks ago for the passenger who now wants to purchase the video of his flight. Everything you want to know and even the option to sell them online! When you have a chance Log in and go to the downloads section of the site. Currently “GoPro and Ballooning” is the featured download on the site. The download is FREE so have a look. As always if you have questions, comments or suggestions let us know. Get your Compass! Very soon the BFA Hot Air Balloon Summer Camps will be firing up! (Yes I know) As in past years we will be providing them with Name badges and sighting compasses. Currently our stock is good but as the competition season gets into full swing we may run low so order yours ASAP. If you have not seen them or were now aware that we had them please visit the online store where you will find two versions of the sighting compass (Plastic & Aluminum) available for purchase. Articles and Photos. As you travel around to the festivals this summer don’t forget the rest of us who don’t get to go play as much. Remember we have an entire section for articles about ballooning. Create a diary of the event and then upload it for everyone to read. Share your adventure about your favorite festival or competition. We also have an entire photo gallery you can upload photos to! Log in and share with us your summer adventures! Hey BALLOON EVENTS! How would you like to post your scores? Believe it or not you can post your scores on HotAirBalloonist.com with an easy copy and paste. Then all your pilots can see the results the moment you post them. We have a section on the site for Blogs; you can create your custom blog for your event and then post the scores from each task for everyone to see. Best of all there is an RSS feed for your blog so others can sign up and be notified as soon as you post your scores. Post as many tasks as you want. If you are interested in this bulletin board style of posting give us a call and we can walk you thru the process. You can also promote your event this way as well. As always we wish you all the best and please fly safe. If there is anything we can help with please let us know. Jeff A Thompson Info@HotAirBalloonist.com 407-421-9322 June 16 Newsletter.docx

Well the summer season is starting. The Event Calendar on HotAirBalloonist.com shows a dramatic increase in the number of events occurring in the month of May! We would like to say to everyone hitting the road to an event, or two, or a dozen this summer please be careful. We are not talking about just the flying you will do at the events but on the road to and from the events. Please take the time to read and consider the following list. Vehicle Tires Trailer Tires Trailer Bearings Lights, Turn, Brake, Marker, Trailer and vehicle Hitch and Ball Tight? Hitch Latching system working Jack Stand Oiled? Spare Tire has air? Jack and lug wrench? Oil Change on Vehicle and your inflation fan? Inflator fan cage, tires, fan hub, air cleaner and shutoff? Radios, discharged and recharged, chargers working, spare batteries, antennas Spare batteries for GPS, Radio, Flashlights Basket in good shape, cleaned out, Tank Straps Tight, Fuel fittings tight, Oiled, Envelope good, Balloon Bag, straps, skirt, Scoop, Lift Gate and tie down straps inspected Ropes and tether gear Balloon Tie off or Quick release working Before you hit the road take an afternoon and grab a crew member or your spouse or whomever is going on the road with you and spend some time looking over your gear. You may find something that could or would have been a disaster on the road. An afternoon spent talking with crew and looking over the gear will not only make you safer but will build trust in your equipment and a common desire amongst your team that you have a safe summer season. We did not intend to cover everything that should be checked but rather give you a start on your own list. Please have fun and be safe. New Events. If you are involved with a balloon event please take a moment to check the HAB Events calendar to see if you are listed. We will be glad to list your event if you are not on our calendar. If you are on the calendar and want to have changes made please let us know. Keep in mind we have an Event Organizers membership that will allow you to post your event yourself as well as provide links, emails, descriptive text and even upload files for others to download! Take a second and read about the Event Organizers Membership. Pilot and Crew Badges. Anyone who has been to the National Balloon Classic has been given a name badge. We made over 1600 for them last year. They are great for identifying people. Great for remembering that pilots name you forgot since last year. They also make a great souvenir or keepsake from your event. They are not as expensive as you may think. Do you have a sponsor who would like a little more exposure? Why not let them pay for the badges in return for their logo on the bottom? Post your contact information and phone numbers on the back. Identify Sponsor’s or VIP’s with a badge. There are many uses and it even helps your spectators by identifying Pilots, Crews, Sponsor’s and Staff! Your spectators always love to ask questions from the pilots and crews. The spectators love it and let’s face it, it’s a little ego boost for the pilots and crews too! Call us or email us on how to get badges for your event for less than you think. The Exchange. We talked about this in our last newsletter. In the Balloon Rides section of HotAirBalloonist.com there is a section called “The Exchange”. This section of the site is private for members only. If you go to the site and look on the Rides page you will not see The Exchange, but, log in as a Pilot Member or above and you will see this private category. There are Exchanges already set up for some of the larger flying areas in the country. The intent of this is that local pilots can communicate with each other about 4 basic areas of information, inside each exchange are four Forums. Crew Forum Pilot Forum Passenger Exchange Landowner Relations Each forum works like the Balloon Reflector. Any topic posted will send an email out to all other members who are following that forum. As you can imagine this can be a huge asset locally for any group of pilots or crew. Imagine you need another crew member for tomorrow. Post it and everyone knows instantly. Imagine you have two extra passengers you need someone to fly. POST IT and everyone will know. If you have two spaces left to fill for tomorrow, POST IT and everyone will know. Imagine you are told that you are not welcome of someone’s property. You guessed it. POST IT and everyone will know. Here in our area we had a landowner who has asked us not to use his property after 15 years of doing so. After posting a topic we found out that several of our local pilots did not know. We would have had an uncomfortable situation on our hands if someone had landed there. Now because everyone is respecting his wishes, he has told us we can use part of his property to launch from. It’s a start but communication was the key and we are sure it is in your area as well. Remember you can share files in the Exchange as well. PDF, GPX, TIFF, JPG, and more. ONLINE TICKETS. I guess we should have labeled this newsletter as the Balloon Events newsletter. Are you involved with an event and would like to sell tickets online? We can do that for you. We can have your event passes set up in our store in as little as 24hours! HONEST.. Sell passes to your event tomorrow! Passes can be scanned and verified with a smart phone. No need for scanners, Wi-Fi or any other expensive gear. Best of all you do not have any mailing costs or set up costs. Just let us know you want to sell passes and we will take if from there. Ride Operations. We have over 350 ride operators listed in our Rides category. If you do balloon rides we encourage you to get a Ride Operators Membership. A very small $5 a month fee will allow you to do so many things on the site but most importantly you can create your own advertisement all about your balloon rides. Include text, links, emails, photos, specials and more. Heck you could even copy and paste your website into a topic. Best of all when someone is looking for a balloon ride and visits your topic they won’t see the disclaimer “This Balloon Ride Operator is NOT a member of HotAirBalloonist.com. Their contact information is listed below. Let them know that, YOU FOUND THEM on HotAirBalloonist.com, and encourage them to become a member”. Instead they will find a complete description of your services and how to contact you to take a flight.. Remember As a Ride Operator Member you create your topic any way you want. Add all the information you want. Another benefit is that when you create your own topic you are now ON TOP of the list of operator’s in your state. This means you get the most traffic from potential passengers. There is also a Yearly Option for this membership. A one-time fee of $50 gives you an entire year! Keep in mind that the topic you create about your services is yours to do as you wish. Post specials, coupons, and more. Change it weekly if you want. The Topic is yours to do as you wish and there are no limits on what you can do with it. Give us a call or send us an email if you want to know more. If you make one booking you have paid for your subscription for the year! And we do spend money on google for placement and advertisements. As the membership grows the advertising will also grow. Current News. Don’t forget there is a web scrubber on our Current Events page. This scrubber goes all over the web finding stories about ballooning. If something hits the news you can bet you will find a link to it or several links on our Current Events page. Stay in the know and visit often. Login in! Remember you need to log in to see most of the items on the site that are created for Balloonists. We have many public areas on the site for the general public but the private membership side of the site is huge. There are many things on the site that are for members only. If you have not logged in for a while you may want to do so. In many cases you will find a bunch of new stuff since the last time you were logged in. If you have forgotten your user name or password there is a password recovery system on the site. If all else fails send us an email and we can help you out. Remember our security protocols do not allow us to see your password so we cannot tell you what it is, however, we can give you a new one. So just let us know and we can get you set up. Don’t forget to select REMEMBER ME when you sign in so you won’t have to remember your password next time. We are starting to fly a bunch down here in Florida and I am sure you are in your part of the country. Please be safe, if you are uncomfortable with the conditions don’t fly! Even if others do! We need leaders and now followers. BE A LEADER! All the best and we hope you have a safe summer Jeff A Thompson Info@HotAirBalloonist.com 407-421-9322 Sorry Jon for so long……(inside joke) April Newsletter 2016.docx

https://bluffcityballoons.com/ Mailing Address: PO Box 3631 Cordova, TN 38088-3631 Bluff City Balloons. Balloon Rides near Memphis Reservations- Toni Durham (901) 481-7367 Pilot- Skip Durham (901) 314-4579 Email- tonitubbs@comcast.net

Since the retirement of the MotionX program those who do not already have that app are missing one of the tools that the app was really great at. The Flight Planning Tool. Below is a video I created and sent to the developer of the HotAir.app, Shawn Gano. Watch and see what I have proposed. ShawnHOTAIR.mp4

So, we have all had them. We have all had those inflation's that we think our head is going to catch fire or the throat of the balloon begins to SMOKE! Lets examine how that happens and how we can avoid the situation. The first thing we need to do is explore a little bit of physics. We all know that heat rises! This is a good thing for us, but do you know why? The simple answer is that when you heat the air in your balloon it gets lighter but why? Those of you who paid attention in physics class will understand that when you heat the air the molecules spread apart making the air less dense. In other words heated air expands and becomes thinner (lighter) than the surrounding air! So how does this apply to not getting your face burned off during a hot summer inflation? Let's use a simple example of "Action vs Re-Action example. You are having breakfast down at the local Waffle House. The server has just filled your coffee cup up to the brim. The guy at the counter next to you decides he is finished and wants to give you his coffee. So he pours his cup of coffee into your "Already FULL" cup. What is going to happen? Your cup can not hold any more and will spill over onto the counter and pour over the side of the counter into your lap! AS you think to yourself Dum~@$$, you should have known that was going to happen! Starting to get the picture? You inflate your balloon all the way full, (Packed as some pilots call it). That big ole fan of yours is cranking air into that envelop to the point where you can bounce your crew chief off the side of the balloon like a 5 year old in a bounce house! You light up that monster burner of yours and start cranking heat into that envelope. Where, exactly do you expect that expanding air to go? So let's get real technical. 1 Cu/Ft of air weighs .0807 of a pound. Your average 77,000 Cu/ft balloon envelope is around 165 pounds. This means, to lift just the weight of your envelope, you must displace over 2,000 cu/ft of air! Where will that much air go? You guessed it, back in your face along with a fair portion of the recently heated air from your burner! It's no wonder you have no eyebrows. So how do we inflate the balloon to a standing position without removing our eyebrows or seriously singeing the mouth of our balloon? To be honest it takes some practice and real good timing to do it right. The first thing you want to do is read the article Fan Placement in this category, and understand the importance of where your fan is placed and when. As you near the point where your balloon is half way full you need to be behind the burners. Add a little heat, just a few small puffs on the burner. Warm up some of that air in the balloon so the expansion process can begin. This will help fill up the balloon quicker, and help lift the weight of the fabric too! Now your balloon is going to bounce around a little and you should make sure your crown line crew knows this is going to happen. They should try to keep the balloon in contact with the ground but not pull so hard that they are squeezing air out of the mouth. (Unless you have a 600 pound crew it is unlikely they will squeeze the air out at this point). Here is where your next Action vs Re-Action lesson begins. Some will say that you run the risk of burning your balloon at this point since your balloon is not completely full. But lets use the old birthday cake candle experiment. Run your hand over the top of a, lit birthday candle. Did your hand get burned? Now hold your hand over the top of a lit birthday candle. It won't take long before you get your hand burned badly. Well the mouth of your balloon is the same way. Direct contact with flames briefly will not harm the fabric but exposure for any lengthy amount of time will result in a trip to the repair station. So remember small blasts on the burner will not harm the mouth of the balloon when done in short blasts and in moderation. NOW, let the balloon settle, and then give it another shot of heat. As the balloon nears 80% full turn the gas off on your inflation fan. Add a little more heat and then wait. It will take a little practice but you will begin to notice the change in sound of your fan as it begins to run out of gas. Some fans will sputter, some fans you can hear the pitch change, but over time you will get real good at knowing just when that fan is going to die. Just before the fan starts to quit start adding heat to begin to stand your balloon upright. You will be amazed at how little heat is needed to actually stand the balloon up at this point and how much less heat you are feeling in your face. An added benefit of this procedure is that when your balloon is standing up and the crew and passengers are all coming to the basket of the balloon, YOU DON"T have that deadly fan running to catch that scarf or drawstring or any other loose items your unsuspecting helpers may be sporting. Here is a video of the procedure in use. inflate.mp4 Feel free to post your reply's below! Thank you for all you do for the balloon world. Jeff A Thompson.

Here is a great page that explains how Northing and Easting works on a UTM map grid. https://www.maptools.com/tutorials/utm/quick_guide