January has been a quiet month for notified sales, with only a couple of envelopes going out of the List with ‘in progress’ sales. Similarly no new envelopes join the List this issue and only one complete balloon although quite a number of smaller items including a bottom end, a basket, fans, radios, a Flytec, LPG pump, anemometer etc liven up the pages. As usual a number of price reductions have also been made.
Readers of the paper list will have noticed that the January issue came from the printers ‘booklet style’. This was unintentional on our part and although attractive, only one of you made a favourable response and our long time envelope stuffer, Rog Kunert gave it a strong thumbs down, being difficult to fold for the A5 envelopes!
Thanks go to Nick Compton for his help at Zebedee HQ in sorting our ‘Aerostat mountain’ over recent weeks. This means we have a few copies (but not all) of the magazine available from the early years 1972-79 in addition to virtually all since 1981 …..
The BBAC AGM is due to be held on Sunday 8th March at the NFU Mutual HQ at Tiddington, near Stratford – the last time we will be at these prestigious premises. Thanks go to Sue Barley who has been our main contact at the NFU for these facilities and who has given up many weekends for various BBAC training days and events over the years.
Last but not least, our congratulations go to Troy Bradley and Leonid Tiukhtyaev for breaking both the distance and duration records for gas balloons with their 6646 mile flight across the Pacific . This intrepid pair spent 160 hours 38 minutes aloft before splashing down four miles off the coast at La Poza Grande in Baja, California. An amazing feat indeed!