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Manchester and something different 17 March 2017- Richard Bowater

I have a broad interest in aviation from model balloon flying to big metal birds but probably top at the moment is anything to do with hot air balloons due to the ease of participation and a great social side to the hobby.

Early this year a group of friends decided to look into buying a special shape balloon which is a sphere shape with multi coloured spiral artwork. It had been out of use for a small period of time and was also the second of its kind. When the guys went to look at it they asked about the first balloon and in the deal the owner let them also have that so they came back with two large balls!

They both passed they’re inspections, the older balloon needed a little TLC to clean it up and remove a bit of mildew which had appeared over time. The process to remove the mildew was to spray and mop all 105,000 cubic feet of the balloons fabric which I believe also weighed in at a nice 180kg! After many hours it was declared washed but now wet so we had to inflate the envelope with a large inflation fan (inflation fans are used to inflate a balloon before the flame is applied). Again this took some time.

The guys had also purchased a job lot of balloon envelopes that they didn’t know what some of them were. The only answer was to take a look in the bag and see the registration panels. The first one had been the home for something with four legs and sharp teeth for some time, the second and third weren’t bad only problem the third one didn’t want to go back into the bag and needed much pushing and cursing! The final job of the day was to get the big sphere back into its bag, it took some time.

Next morning I had a look at a transiting autogyro, or should I say the mortal remains of an autogyro which was also stopping over at the Bnb. We were staying very near Manchester Airport so I just had to go and see what was new, almost everything was new. My first ground sighting of an A380! A number of 787s appeared Thomson, Saudi and Qatar. Then a single A350 of Singapore Airlines. The locals also produced a number of they’re new Airbuses with the new extended winglets. Air Transat provided a blast from the past in the shape of faithful A310 C-GTSY from a distance it still looked good. Bizz produced nothing fantastic.

The airport went quiet after the departure of the second A380 so it was time to go home.

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