The new year has certainly seen a burst of activity on the balloon market. A combination of pilots packing for the Saudi Arabian meet, some new P u/ts and general preparation for what is hoped to be a better year for flying all contributed.
Last year’s highly successful One-Man meet appears to be having a knock-on effect too with G-NLCH and G-BKVY being sold from the List – and G-LORY sold before it hit these pages.
Other sales include Claude Gouzerh’s Concept 90 and Thunder 120 envelope in France, a 275 envelope and from Zebedee a basket and 3 burners.
New for February are some CB599s, a fan and a burner from Claude in France, a vintage basket & burner from Gordon McCarthy and several ads from Russell Bairstow, including an ICOM A6E, .933 Khz enabled with all the accessories in its box. Zebedee too is offering one of these plus several Mitex General UHF high-power “walkie talkies”, much enthused about by their owner.
A new envelope bag, M1165 appears in our List. We’ve called it the “Sackville Sack”, designed by Tim and made by Jane Austin, the idea being that you stuff all the envelope in a high sided, oversize bag and do all the squeezing-in once it is inside (by sitting on it) then the spare fabric at the top becomes “the flap” and ties down to the normal size. We tried it with a 90 and the final “stuffing in” meant lifting the last part of the envelope high over the side but the basic concept worked OK thereafter.
Zebedee is pleased to announce that it now has a sizeable stock of the much loved LBL 5t karabiners in stock – the best there is proclaims Kim! These were produced, but not delivered to LBL and are available at £19 inc VAT each, the same price we charge for the Stubai 5t tethering karabiner. Nice gold colour too! A UK Form One is available with them at no extra cost.
Lastly a special offer from the Dante Balloon Group. In December we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the first flight of “Dante” G-AZIP – and last Sunday (30th January) the 50th Anniversary of the first flight from Marsh Benham, Berks (by P1 Peter Langford instructing our late Alec Jenkinson). Over those years we have had a series of balloons in the various liveries of BOAC then BA. Although not sponsored in the normal way, with us paying for a lot of the equipment, insurance and maintenance/C’s of A etc, we travelled the world on promotional events with tickets and usually hotels paid for but now retired ourselves have lost all our contacts within the airline. We started with 11 members, which became 18 some years later out of a total of 27 ever, 17 of whom gained their licences. We are down to 9 members now with just one current pilot.
If anyone in the UK either works for the airline or has a contact that might make use of Cameron Concept 70, G-BXOT envelope, which is in the current livery, then have a look under Envelopes. A 2.5m Westfalia in the same livery is available – not for sale until the envelope goes.