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Two Get Very High (Part 1)
Two get very high - Part one.
So there we were, 30,000' upside down, nothing on the clock but
the maker's name. All good flying stories should start with a
line like that. For Lev David and I, it was sort of true.
Topping out at 30,334', briefly we were the highest people stood
outside anywhere. We shook hands and the feeling was humbling
and then we had to return to a pressing need. Relighting the
pilot lights, they had gone out 834 feet beforehand. I knew that
the chances of getting them lit before we had dropped below
25,000' were slim - the balloon factory in England had told me
so!
The story began as so many do in a Beer tent. Splashy Fen 2004
Underberg Kwa Zulu Natal. I had met Lev David, producer and
presenter of East Coast Radio's breakfast show a month or two
earlier. He stood on top of one of my balloons at the ABSA
Stadium Durban. I was very impressed with his fearless manner.
Live on the show they had spoken via sat phone to a climber on
top of Kilimanjaro, Lev asked if the balloon could get higher
and I said of course. Reaching the height of Everest at 29,000'
and a bit seemed the way forward. With my beer head on, I had
said the balloon could do it without really thinking about it.
What would it matter we both would have forgotten the
conversation by the morning.
The conversation was forgotten but only for a couple of weeks.
When revisited in the cold light of day, the problem of getting
the balloon to height did not seem insurmountable. A quick check
of the manufacturers slide rule load calculator proved that two
of us could easily get up to 15,000' with a couple of hundred
spare kilos of lift in hand. Sitting down with the formulas
would be required for an accurate idea of what we could lift
higher. Time to ask grown ups for help.
I have a friend in Australia, Steve Griffin who makes a habit of
taking small balloons to great heights. He holds several world
records for one-man balloons and has even gone to the Arctic in
order to get into efficient low temperatures. An email to Steve
provided an excel spreadsheet which I had to modify slightly as
he can't get much above 18,000' in a hopper. It had the maths
sorted though. I ran the numbers and worked out that we would
have at least 40Kg of spare lift at 30k.
Working the old saying, measure twice cut once, I checked with
another grown up, Simon Forse, the technical guy at Lindstrand
balloons in England. He sent this jaunty equation, based on a
180 at an internal temp of 100C
L = p x V Therefore L = V x p0 Im = 3.28084ft Where for 30Kft =
9143m or 9500m P0 = 0.43890 kgIm3 T0 = 226.4 0K V = 5100m3 T1 =
100 0C or 373 0K 0.60697 L = 5100 x 0.43890
L = 5100 x 0.43890 x 0.39303
L max = 879kg
Ok so we could certainly lift the two of us.
Getting into the stride of things it was time to address the
environment in which we would be operating. The Internet, modern
source of answers to everything quickly painted a picture. We
potentially faced temperatures of -60C in 110 knot winds
generally from the North West. I knew it was going to be cold
but -60! The wind speed mattered not, other than selection of
launch site. As long as it was slow for the landing.
Every 18,000' that you climb halves the properties of the
atmosphere at sea level. We would be operating close to ¼ of sea
level density. Less than half the available air obviously means
much less oxygen for
1. Us 2. The pilot lights.
All pilots have heard of hypoxia, once again the internet
provides answers without oxygen you would last... Times of
Useful Consciousness (Effective performance time) Altitude
Conscious time 20,000 25,000 30,000 35,000 40,000 45,000 50,000+
5 - 12 minutes 2 - 3 minutes 45 - 75 seconds 30 - 60 seconds 10
- 30 seconds 12 - 15 seconds 12 or less seconds
Important also to realise that this is the time it will take you
to become unconscious, at 30k death will follow after 2 minutes.
Obviously we would have to get the right oxygen equipment. I
will not go in to great detail but the continuous flow systems
often used in light aircraft for supplementary oxygen are not
suitable for flight above 20,000'. A pulse breathing system and
mask is required for higher altitudes and the amount of oxygen
needed to be pumped at you increases dramatically.
Now when I started looking the only people that I could find
that had that sort of gear were the military. The systems are
used for high altitude parachute jumps by the Special Forces.
Contact was made with the air force and at the same time SA
flyer magazine, I figured they might well know someone who could
help.
That was us, now for the pilot lights. In the past people have
rigged up supplies of oxygen for the pilot lights but that is
now considered rather dodgy. One hard landing and you have
broken oxygen bottle feeding perhaps a tank fire. As you climb
higher the burner flame starts to detach from the burner, moving
higher. This is the point at which the correct mix of oxygen to
support the flame is present. Eventually the flame will detach
and disappear up into the envelope all by itself. To stop that
happening you need to lean the fuel mixture. There are two ways,
either moderates the flow using the tank valve or fit reduced
jets. This is the option we took. Once above 25,000' you leave
the modified burner running continuously. A leaned burner means
less power available. This will bring us up against a
fundamental mistake made in high flight planning.
At sea level you can get about 220 kg per hour of fuel through
the burners, burning flat out. Take those burners to 30k and the
maximum you can get through is 20 kg whilst sustaining a flame.
If you try and get more through it will simply blow out the
flame too much fuel to air. You don't have to be a rocket
scientist to realise that you will not be able to generate lots
of heat.
Load charts assume an internal temperature of 100C it is
unlikely even with the burners operating flat out that you will
generate that temperature. An internal temp of 80C is far more
reasonable.
All further load calculations for the flight were made assuming
an internal temp of 80C. This meant losing weight, from the
equipment and from ourselves.
Going to a gym is a fairly alien concept for me but I knew
weight had to go and fitness had to improve for altitude
conditioning.
An unwelcome side effect of getting the equipment light for high
altitude is the effect it has when you return to low level. If
you do a really good job of getting the weight off and the
internal temperature drops into the 40C range then you are in
danger of going solar. The sun will keep you flying and make it
devilishly hard to land; more especially stop on a windy day.
That's why when looking at
the weather an overcast day might be
a good idea.
Now we had an idea of what to expect, what sort of oxygen
equipment we needed and what we needed to do to the kit. How
long would it take? Another thumb suck approximation was made.
Fuel for two hours should be enough.
Lev would broadcast live to the show and that bought a set of
communication problems but radio being radio and not TV meant
finding other ways to engage the listeners.
Live tracking of the balloon on the East Coast website was the
method chosen. Time to find people that knew how to do it. By
chance I came across Stuart Baynes from Joburg. He proved to be
a great source of knowledge and eventually put us in touch with
H Communications. They very kindly offered to build and find
sponsors for the entire tracking gig.
It would be handy for the crew to be able to see where we were
as well. If there was 110 knots of wind at altitude we would be
a long way away quick. In order to do this we would need
laptops. These were provided by HP one in the balloon and two on
the ground.
The thought of high winds at altitude and a look at the charts
and suitable landing areas pulled us towards choosing Estcourt
airfield as a launch site. Another consideration was that if we
had to standby for weather for any amount of time we could leave
the gear rigged in a hanger and pull it out as required.
Next we had to make sure we would be allowed to climb to 30k in
that area. Special use of airspace was cleared with CAMU for the
first week of May which is when traditionally frost arrives in
this wood of the neck. I must say that Tanya at CAMU was
outstanding.
Lev sorted out clothing used by climbers on Everest, Foshini's
new outdoor clothing retailers, Due South kindly let us walk
into a flagship store and choose what we wanted.
With bits coming together and knowledge being gathered we
ordered the high altitude burner jets and once they arrived
scheduled a practice flight. This was a month beforehand at the
beginning of April. The idea behind that being we would have
plenty of time to fix things or change stuff.
The tracking system required a relay station connected to an
always on internet connection. It would also help if that was at
a high spot. Andrew at the Antbear B&B in the hills above
Estcourt helped with that. Rather annoyingly all the equipment
worked at home and as soon as it was moved fell over. That meant
that for the practice the only recording we would have would be
from the following vehicle.
Unfortunately the weather didn't play ball. The Saturday morning
was forecast windy with rain. We took a decision not to drive
all the way up to Estcourt and instead try and get as much done
from home as possible.
We had hoped to fly four of us to 20k but with the forecast high
speed winds at low level I was not happy carrying oxygen
equipment kindly leant by Peter How of Composite Technologies I
did not want to damage it.
It was all unravelling really. Still we went ahead with
Charmaine from SA Flyer on board. As soon as we took off Henry
informed us the tracking was not working. Lesson number one, we
had put the tracking box in a different compartment to Lev. He
had to climb across and open it up. Lesson number two, Henry had
not turned it on!
Up we went to a very average 12,000'. Lev started getting used
to driving the software for the 1:50000 maps that were on our
laptop. All in all it was a fairly pleasant flight landing
ironically on the other side of the highway from Estcourt
airfield.
It may not have been a thundering success but it did get all the
players together at the same time and introduce those that had
not seen balloons before to what happens. It also gave what had
now become a team, a more focussed and real goal.
Next came high altitude training with the air force at
Waterkloof there we were taken without oxygen in the hyperbaric
chamber to 20,000' and then left to sit a while and become
hypoxic. To be honest the chamber was the thing that I was most
afraid of and the reason that I had been dragging myself to the
gym every morning for two months. I had lost very little weight,
only 6kg but was feeling much fitter. On average I was doing
22km a day on the machines.
Our blood oxygen saturation levels were measured and at the
start Lev had a perfect score of 100 I lagged behind at 96
percent. Lev being only 24 and much fitter and leaner than me
had not been as diligent with his training. I was somewhat
miffed. Having sat a while our oxygen levels were checked again
and Lev had dropped to 67% and I was happily a whole 11% better
off at 78%. We can only put it down to me living up here at 4000
odd feet and training harder. Reviewing the video of our trip in
the chamber you can clearly see us joking more and I vividly
remember thinking how heavy the camera was becoming. On the way
down at 4000 fpm my ears really started hurting after only two
minutes I was complaining. The Sgt Major controlling events
outside slowly took us back up to 18k again and then we started
down again at a more leisurely rate. On examination by the doc
afterwards my ear wax was said to have moved and blocked my left
ear. Nice very nice.
The next day both Lev and I felt exhausted.
Many promises had been made by many people about the oxygen
gear. This was what the flight hinged on. We were let down by a
couple of companies and in the end I resorted to discovering who
made the gear used here by the military. I found the company in
the UK and they agreed to send me a couple of units. The only
snag was that they are considered a weapon and we would have to
apply for permission to import weapons! All too difficult with
less than a month to go a real pain.
Another return to the internet and now I was looking probably
where I should have been in the first place, the climbing world.
I quickly found equipment from Mountain High and established
that it was good for heights of up to 31,000'. As luck would
have it they had an agent in South Africa. By chance he shared a
combination of Lev and my surnames, David Mortimer. That omen
seemed good and David let the project live once more. Not only
does David import the gear he also fly's it in his gliders and
is the president of the Soaring Society. He would act as our
official observer.
With two weeks to run I started tracking what the upper air
winds were doing and plotting accurately where we would be taken.
Talk is cheap so it was time to fly.
http://www.airborneadventuresafrica.com
About the author:
A professional hot air balloon pilot for 18 years Gary Mortimer
has flown passengers throughout the world. He now has his own
hot air balloon ride company on the Midlands Meander in Kwa Zulu
Natal South Africa.
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