The Garden City Telegram
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Up, up and away
Published 8/22/2008 in News : Education
By EMILY BEHLMANNebehlmann@gctelegram.com
About 300 children wriggled around and squealed as they sat on the ground behind Gertrude Walker Elementary School, fanning themselves as they felt the heat of the fire that sprang from Royce Miller’s hot air balloon basket.
“Do you think I can cook a marshmallow on this?” Miller asked.
“Yeah!” they responded, then chanted, “Start it! Start it!” as they waited for the pilot to crank it up again.
“You could feel the heat,” fourth-grader Aubrey Cady said later. “And it was loud.”
Miller and his wife, Debbie, of Guymon, Okla., gave demonstrations with what Miller called his “big boy toy,” The Green Hornet balloon, at Gertrude Walker and Edith Scheuerman elementary schools Friday afternoon.
He and eight other balloonists are in town this weekend for the Finney County Convention and Tourism Bureau’s Hot Air Balloon Classic. The annual event is expected to include several balloon launches at the Finney County Fairgrounds, though all are dependent on weather conditions.
It was too windy to completely inflate The Green Hornet Friday afternoon, Miller said, illustrating by releasing into the air a small helium balloon with a streamer attached. Students’ heads turned to follow it as it zipped off to the north and disappeared.
Inflating the balloon fully would be risky, Miller said, as the wind likely would lift it off the ground even if crew members on the ground tried to stop it.
“If this thing decides to go somewhere, it’s gonna go,” he said when preparing crew members before the school presentation.
However, the Millers and a group of volunteer crew members unfurled the green and yellow balloon along the ground at Gertrude Walker. They used a fan to partially inflate it as students edged away to avoid the expanding mass of fabric.
At its fullest, the Green Hornet would be 58 feet tall from the bottom of its basket to the top of the balloon, Miller said.
He said that while his balloon is lifted by hot air, many other balloons rely on gases lighter than the surrounding air to get off the ground.
The concept of using hot air for travel originated more than 200 years ago in France, where people noticed that the hot air from chimneys would rise into the sky, Miller said.
“(Balloons) were flying 100 years before man ever got into an airplane,” he said.
Now, flying hot air balloons is a hobby for many, and something the students could do when they’re older, he told them. Though some of the pilots are male, there are a lot of female pilots, he said.
“They always beat me,” Miller said.
Even if they don’t become pilots, Cady and classmates Jasmine Dunbar and Seriah Baysinger all said they’d like to at least take a hot air balloon ride themselves someday.
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Balloon glow Friday
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