Grab Your Lawn Chair. Float Away.
By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA
Published: July 13, 2008
If God had wanted man to fly, he would have — well, you know. The point is that a lack of wings didn’t stop Kent Couch. On July 5 Mr. Couch, a 48-year-old gas station owner, slipped the surly bonds of Earth in a device of his own making: a lawn chair attached to more than 150 helium-filled balloons. Taking off from Bend, Ore., Mr. Couch drifted 235 miles to Cambridge, Idaho, in about nine hours.
It was his third “cluster balloon” excursion since 2006.
“Once you’re up, it’s really pleasant,” he said. “It’s so serene. That’s a word I never used before this.”
Serene might be one description of the experience. Idiotic might be another. But there does seem to be an undeniable whimsy to the idea of floating away in a comfortable chair buoyed by a panoply of shiny balloons.
“There are two distinct camps,” said Andrew Baird, president of the Balloon Federation of America. “Some are experienced balloonists who know what they’re doing. And there are those who know little or nothing. Those are the kind of people who are going to get in trouble.”
He estimates that there are perhaps 10 such flights a year, though no one knows for sure. No license is required. Nor is a flight plan.
Jean Piccard, the aeronautical pioneer, may have been the first to use multiple balloons to fly. In 1937, he ascended to 11,000 feet over Minnesota and Iowa in a small gondola attached to 95 four-foot-tall balloons. He landed safely, reportedly by popping balloons with a knife and revolver to control his descent.
Nearly 20 years later, moviegoers were entranced as a young boy clutching a bevy of bright balloons soared above Paris in the 1956 French film “The Red Balloon.” The image is so enduringly tantalizing, yet so seemingly unbelievable, that it was explored in a pilot episode of the Discovery Channel series “MythBusters.”
Of course, we’re not talking birthday-party balloons here. Huge latex or chloroprene balloons are the instruments of choice. Normally used for advertising or promotional purposes, the balloons are commercially available, generally in diameters up to eight feet. Inflate enough of these gasbags with helium, attach them to a seat or harness, and voilà — instant Daedalus. To come down, pop them with a pellet gun or cut them loose. One at a time, of course.
The patron saint of the everyman school of cluster ballooning — the chief “balloonatic,” if you will — is undoubtedly Lawrence Walters, a k a Lawn Chair Larry. In 1982, he became an overnight folk hero when he tied 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair in San Pedro, Calif., christened the craft “Inspiration I” and shot up to more than 16,000 feet. Adrift and out of control, he startled at least two airline pilots. Upon descending Mr. Walters snared a power line, caused a brief blackout, and was fined $1,500 by the Federal Aviation Administration.
He was lucky. On April 20, a Brazilian priest named Adelir Antonio de Carli took off from the coastal city of Paranaguá, buoyed by 1,000 balloons. He was reported missing eight hours later. The day before Mr. Couch’s flight, rescuers recovered a body from the ocean that they said may be Father de Carli’s.
Les Dorr, a spokesman for the F.A.A., said that the phenomenon is probably “too small” to warrant guidelines. But he added, “If someone is planning it, for their own safety they really should contact us.” In Mr. Couch’s case, Mr. Dorr said, “we’re looking into it to see if he violated any F.A.A. regulations.”
Shortly after his adventure, Mr. Couch indeed got a phone call from the F.A.A. They were not pleased to learn that he had flown through a cloud, thereby violating rules about maintaining visual contact with the ground. The F.A.A. also wanted to determine if his contraption qualified as an ultralight aircraft, as defined by Federal Aviation Regulations, Part 103.
“It sounded like three or four guys in a room firing questions,” Mr. Couch recalled. “I said, 'Maybe I should get an attorney.’ ”
Although Mr. Couch is largely self-taught, cluster balloonists like Jonathan Trappe, who went aloft for four hours on June 7 with 55 huge helium balloons, prefer to take no chances. A 35-year-old technical projects manager in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Trappe is an F.A.A.-certified private pilot, rated to operate hot-air balloons. For his recent flight, he worked with an F.A.A.-certified rigger, carried a clutch of safety equipment and alerted regional air traffic controllers ahead of time.
“Cluster ballooning is something people can do,” Mr. Trappe said. “They just need to do it safely. I’m very concerned that people will do it without the appropriate training.”
Not that he didn’t inject some whimsy into his trip. Mr. Trappe’s gondola was actually his office chair. “It represents a contrast between the normal mundane world,” he said, “and the world of my dreams.”
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