Adirondack Balloon Flights Blog

After a very busy and productive first 2/3′s of July, the bottom 1/3 of the month has not been so productive in producing flights. The weekend is busy, hopefully the flying weather will cooperate better than last weekend’s. Only flight during the week was on Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday morning, I flew the Tobias family from CT who were vacationing in the area.

My flying schedule is full for this weekend, and the weather forecast looks promising, Next week, I have space available on most flights. The flying weather forecast looks best on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday for flying during the week, at this time. Call or email me if you are interested in flying, I have space available.

This past week was not the most productive flying week for me in July. The only flight was on Friday morning. I chose not to do afternoon flights this week due to the heat and humidity, and the weekend didn’t bring conditions suitable to fly my customers. I did notice that some of our newly minted commercial pilots did fly their passengers on Saturday morning with rain and storms just on the southern edge of our flight area most of the morning. More on that later. Friday morning brought us decent, but hot flying conditions, so I could fly my customers who were visiting from Bogota, Columbia. They included a flight with us in their itinerary while in the states.

This is Jose Martinez and his wife Maria and son Juan on the flight.

An apres flight photo of a somewhat windy landing, with the balloon nicely laid-out by the wind

The weather forecast for this week offers a some good flying weather mid week, being wrapped by rain at the beginning and the end of the week. The flying weather should then improve for the last weekend of the month, and then on to August. How the time does fly bye. It will be the fall flying season before you know it, so, our fall flyers may want to get their reservations in soon. Our fall season will be here before you know it.

We have been getting some decent weather this month for flying. It is a definite improvement from all the rain we got during our Spring flying season. Now to catch-up on some of our recent flights -

On Wednesday morning we flew Sara and Jeff, which was Sara's birthday.

Next up, on Friday morning we flew 2 couples. This is John And Maureen from Lake George

Our other Friday morning couple is Daryl and Jan. They hail from Valdosta GA

On Friday evening, we flew Doug and Inga from Scotia who were celebrating an anniversary.

This morning, Saturday the 16th, I flew Ken and Joe from the Baltimore area.

There are more flights to come this weekend, as our flight weather should hold through tonight and at least Sunday morning, if not right through Monday morning. It’s a beautiful summer weekend for folks in the area for vacation. And, as just a hint on what we’re expecting for next week’s weather, HHH summer weather is on the way!

Since the 4th Holiday, we’ve had both good and bad flying weather days. It pretty much has been one good day to fly, and one day to get the lawn and veggy garden watered. Other than overnight tonight into Saturday morning, and late Monday into Tuesday, the forecast is looking pretty good both for doing some flying and for folks who are coming to the area for some vacation-time.

On Saturday evening, I flew the Cummings family on a beautiful, bright blue sky evening.

On Tuesday, Charlie took his granddaughter Erika up on another nice evening to be flying.

On Friday morning, I took up 3 generations of Patsy Schulenberg's family - mom Patsy, granddaughter Lisa, and daughter Jeannette.

As far as flying weather goes for this year, it’s been a fair week for getting some flights done. Monday wasn’t too bad a day, but a lack of wind made for a couple of canceled flights.

A recent flight.

Flew Ray and Pat on Tuesday morning, up over Argyle.

Then it rained late in the day, heavy rain and big thunder to add to our rainfall total so far this flying season. The next couple of days were not flyable until we got to Friday. The weather going into the 4th Holiday weekend offers some opportunities for flying.

The Neumann Family on Friday morning.

Ron took his grandson Ryan up for a ride on Friday afternoon. Here's a look at the interior of our hot air balloon basket. It offers a level of comfort you generally don't find on a balloon flight. It's first class all the way!

A view of the underside of our balloon while in flight.

Coming in for a landing, followed close behind by another balloon on Friday.

That’s it for now. We didn’t fly on Saturday morning due to fog and a lack of wind. Sometimes little to no wind is more of a problem that a lot of wind, plus it makes for a boring flight since you don’t go anywhere. I’m not in the business to offer customers a boring experience. It should be good for our flight tonight, then more rain late tonight and for Sunday. Hopefully, it won’t be another hard rainer. The 4th may be ok for flying as should Tuesday and early Wednesday before the next weather system shuts us down until at least Friday.