The hot air balloon is the first means of transport that allowed man to “fly”. But how exactly is it possible to take off and take flight?
As we have already written in the article “How a hot air balloon works” this goes up if the balloon is filled with hot air, vice versa it goes down if the air inside the balloon cools, allowing the pilot to directly control the vertical movements of the balloon.
To be able to take off it is therefore necessary to fill the balloon with hot air from the ground.
To do this, the balloon is placed in the launch field and air is thrown into it through a fan. When the latter has “inflated” the balloon sufficiently, the burner is activated, that is the mechanism that produces the hot air inside the balloon. By doing this, the balloon slowly begins to inflate and take the shape that we all know, and then be able to get up permanently from the ground (as we said, the hot air tends to go upwards).
The inflation phase is a real ritual for hot-air balloon lovers, the magic of flight preparation is not very different from the flight itself, so we recommend you, if you haven’t done it yet or if you have never taken a hot air balloon trip, arrive at the launch point half an hour before to be able to attend.
Once everything is ready and the crew and passengers are in position, the basket is unhooked from any holds to which it was secured: the balloon can now conquer the sky by continuing the magic started in the inflation.
