Closing date for the February 2026 issue (No 466) is 29th January 2026
Latest Issue
Issue 465: January 2026
Due to a number of circumstances including our presence at The Icicle Refrozen Meet and sickness, the January Zebedee List is appearing later in the month than ever before. We will do better in February!
A combination of Christmas festivities and the number of meets in Europe – and further afield has probably resulted in the lack of new ads for January, with just the bottom end ad from Frederik Kohnen in the Netherlands joining our pages this time. Reported sales have been a couple of baskets – and the long advertised Gefa-Flug AS105GD G-EOGE.
It was good to see blue skies and frosty mornings at The Icicle Refrozen Meet, yet the brisk north-westerly wind on Saturday morning resulted in no free flying, but did see several historic inflations and a great turnout of ever colourful model balloons. On Sunday the wind was lighter and a number of free flights were made with one landing ‘not far short of Chichester…!’ The trade show seemed busier than recent years and Mike Moore’s slide show and after dinner speech was as you would expect from this ‘old master’. Just a shame that once again the hotel management had not found the ‘on’ button for any heat within the tent – with those ‘who knew’ wearing their overcoats throughout proceedings ! Organisation of the pre-dinner drinks was the usual bunfight at the downstairs bar where it was obvious that different people should be selling pre-dinner drinks and bottles of wine for the table – but then we recall exactly the same happening each year at The Elcot 40+ years ago….!
Time for bed said Zebedee!
For several months we have been contemplating the future for our business, as has Chris Dunkley at Easy Balloons. Don’t panic! No immediate changes are planned, but being realistic the next few years will see us winding down and we thought we should spell out some timely truths and maybe encourage some youngsters into balloon maintenance & repair.
We have written a joint statement which we hope will trigger both business enterprise and some thoughts as to how you can ease the pain of your next repair …..
Scam Warning
WARNING!
We have been alerted by two of our advertisers to a scam which is currently doing the rounds. In each case the potential buyer agrees to buy an item and then sends a cheque in payment. However the cheque is for more than the asking price of the item. The ‘buyer’ then asks the seller to refund the difference. Because it sometimes takes a week or more for the bank to process a cheque, it can be some time before the seller realises the cheque has bounced.
We have heard of 4 advertisers who have received enquiries in the past week for equipment. They all involve a complicated routine involving (international) cheques and the fact that the enquirer is on honeymoon… beware !