Balloonists Enjoy the Doing More Than the Winning, but Hey, If There’s a Prize Out There, They’ll Grab for the Brass Ring

Ever tried to grab a brass ring on a carrousel ride? Think it was tough?

Then try this one: Instead of approaching the ring from the other side of the carrousel, try starting after it from about two miles away, with no guarantee that once you start for it you’ll end up anywhere close. Also, the ring isn’t within easy reach; it’s on the top of a 25-foot pole. And you can’t approach it from the ground--you have to grab it as you come out of the sky. And don’t think of it simply as a brass ring: Think of it as a new car. Finally, remember that at the same time, a few dozen other car-loving folks are going to be racing toward that ring at the scorching clip of around 2 m.p.h.

This sort of thing is Peter Scherm’s meat and potatoes. Scherm is one of an estimated 50 active hot-air balloon pilots who live in Orange County, and swooping in on a set of car keys on a pole is something of a passion with him. A certified balloon pilot for the last seven years, he regularly competes at balloon festivals throughout the country and enters several events offered at those festivals, one of which is known as the “key grab.”

“Mostly the festivals are just getting together for two weeks of fun with a lot of other balloonists,” Scherm said, “and the competition comes second. With the key grab I’m pretty competitive, though. I’ll be out there letting off 20 little helium balloons to check for wind direction, or I’ll check out 20 different launch sites.”

Hot-air balloonists might be called Orange County’s invisible aviators. Because of the county’s busy commercial air traffic, suburban sprawl and lack of easily accessible landing areas, the sight of a hot-air balloon in county skies is rare.

Nevertheless, in garages throughout the county sit tightly woven wicker baskets and storage bags filled with yards and yards of lightweight nylon that compose the hot-air balloonist’s sky vehicle. Beyond that, all that the pilots need are a few tanks filled with propane, an inflating fan, some flat, open land and someone to retrieve them when they finally decide to return to earth.

And, like Scherm, who lives in Costa Mesa, they occasionally need the company of other balloon pilots. So they travel to places such as Las Vegas or Ocala, Fla., or Albuquerque or, more locally, to Temecula in Riverside County to float on the breezes, talk ballooning and compete.

“For most of us, the race is secondary to the opportunity to get to fly in another area of the country,” said Jim Moss, a police detective and balloon pilot who lives in Fountain Valley. “You’re going to a place where all the work is done for you, like the weather briefings and the launch site selections. But once you get into a race, well, we say that winning a balloon race is about 10% luck and 90% pilot error.”

Actually, “race” is a misnomer, because a hot-air balloon has never been known as a quick method of getting from point A to point B. In fact, balloonists won’t fly in windy weather because of the roughness of the resulting landing. Because there’s no way to control the speed of a balloon--it moves no slower or faster than the wind that bears it along--most flights take place in the still air of early morning.

Which is why a balloon “race” is generally not a test of speed but of accuracy. Hot-air balloons are not steerable in the conventional sense: The only way to control the direction of flight is to ascend or descend to layers of air that are moving in the direction the pilot wants to go. Which makes flying a balloon two miles to a set of car keys atop a 25-foot pole a bit like trying to drift a large yacht into a small slip with no rudder.

“It’s very, very difficult to do,” said Kim Lynch, a Fullerton balloonist who, with her husband, Dave, operates a commercial balloon charter business. “Some people get really scientific about it and launch little guide balloons and look around for good launch sites. But usually the people who win just say, ‘Well, this looks like a good spot,’ and off they go.

“It can get very, very frustrating, though. You can come within 10 feet of the pole, or you can come so close that the keys are just out of reach, and there’s nothing you can do to get closer and get them.”

Winning the event, Moss said, “is like a hole in one in a golf tournament.”

Other conventional balloon events include a “hare and hound” race, in which the entrants chase a leader balloon and try to land or drop a bean bag closest to the leader balloon’s landing spot. Another, called a convergent navigational task, involves balloonists trying to maneuver and drop a marker closest to a fixed target on the ground.

Also, Kim Lynch said, there are the occasional novelty events. She recalled one that required each pilot to drop a table tennis ball into a fiberglass spa on the ground. The first pilot whose ball didn’t bounce out of the spa took the spa home as a prize.

No such competitions or festivals are held within the boundaries of Orange County, but on nearly any clear, still weekend the skies just a few miles to the southeast of the county are filled with brightly colored hot-air balloons.

As with the Napa Valley in Northern California, the Temecula wine-growing region’s combination of still morning air, clear views and accommodating landowners makes it one of the best places in Southern California for balloonists to fly their craft.

It’s also a good place to make a buck. Once they obtain their private license, many pilots, such as Kim and Dave Lynch, decide to put in the 35 hours of flying time needed to get a commercial pilot rating. Then they can carry passengers for money. In fact, said Lynch, who is the secretary and membership chairman of the Southern California Balloonists Assn., most of the active balloonists in Orange County are commercially rated and regularly make charter flights at Temecula, Perris, Del Mar, Palm Springs and other spots suited to the sport.

Scherm’s “champagne flight” package is typical of those offered by most Southland commercial balloonists. Arriving in the Temecula area about dawn, he and his passengers drive to one of several launch sites where the passengers actually help Scherm inflate the balloon.

The flight usually lasts about an hour, after which the balloon is packed up and the party rides in the “chase” vehicle to a nearby winery for a champagne brunch provided by Scherm. Flight certificates are also provided.

Depending upon the time in the air and the amenities afterward, such flights can cost $75 to $125 per person.

While the pilots enjoy competition and the money that commercial flights can bring, they said watching their passengers is worth almost as much.

“In competition, getting close to the target can be a heck of a thrill,” Moss said, “but I really love the reaction when I take someone up for the first time. Their enthusiasm is totally contagious. It’s rare that you take someone up and you’re not buddies by the end of the morning. Because the customer is also the crew; they don’t just pack up and say ‘Thank you’ and go on to the next ride at Disneyland.”

Lynch said: “When you’re flying someone who’s wanted to do this forever, the expression on their face is the biggest high I can describe. You know you’re fulfilling somebody’s dream.”

That dream can be fulfilled in Orange County, but the pilots said they generally don’t like the idea. To pilot a balloon in the county, permission from air traffic control is needed, and an aviation radio must be carried. And there are few good places to land, as Scherm once found out.

In February, 1986, Scherm, giving a ride to a couple in honor of the husband’s birthday, performed what is known in ballooning circles as a “splash and dash” in Newport Harbor. After obtaining permission from the John Wayne Airport tower and taking off from a parking lot in Costa Mesa, Scherm descended over the harbor and landed the balloon gently on the surface of the water.

“I was in contact with the tower and in control of the balloon all the time,” he said. “We were on the water about 15 minutes, and then the Harbor Patrol came down. I took off again and landed at the beach right near the Newport Pier.”

He got a ticket for landing an aircraft without a permit.

In an age of speed, particularly in the air, why do people become balloonists? Lynch said she and her husband were typical, having become immediately fascinated with the sport after taking a balloon ride five years ago.

“Like most people, we learned to fly from the person we took our first flight from,” she said. “We just got hooked. And from fun it just worked into a business. Now we fly just about every weekend, weather permitting, and we go to about three races a year. We’ll usually go to the festivals in Fresno and Las Vegas every year, and to the balloon and wine festival in Temecula. We’ve been to Albuquerque, too. They call that one the Big One.”

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, held in October, is the largest gathering of hot-air balloonists in the country.

“Personally, I like to go there as an observer rather than a pilot,” Lynch said. “When you have around 500 balloons together in less than a five-mile radius at liftoff time, I’d say that’s a little crowded. And you not only have to fly your balloon, you have to fly the balloons of everyone around you. You have to hope and pray they stay out of your way. Sometimes that can get to be a little too much like stress.”

Such competition, Moss said, “is one way of keeping your skills up, although a balloon pilot is really dependent upon his ground crew. They can make a pilot look like he’s really good.”

The ground, or “chase” crews, Moss said, communicate with the pilots by radio, warning them if they’re getting too close to another balloon and otherwise directing them. They also follow the flight of the balloons to pick up the pilots after landing.

A good crew, Moss said, can help preserve the pilot’s investment in equipment, which can be considerable. Balloons with custom-designed envelopes (the fabric part of the craft) can cost up to $30,000.

Apart from competition, however, most balloonists will admit to being traditionalists. After each charter flight, Scherm performs a “champagne ceremony” in which he sprinkles a bit of bubbly on each of his first-time passengers and toasts them with the traditional beverage of balloonists everywhere.

When ballooning first began in France in the late 18th Century, he tells his passengers, “the pilots would just come down anywhere, maybe in some farmer’s field. The farmers didn’t like that much, so the pilots always carried champagne with them. After a couple of glasses, the farmer wasn’t so angry anymore.”

For Moss, who also holds a fixed-wing pilot’s license, ballooning at its best is simply drifting and dreaming, a way to see the world from the sky when you don’t really care how fast you get there.

“I haven’t gotten to the point where I’ll be in competition and feel I have to win the race,” he said.

“For me, the fun is still getting out there and floating around in the balloon. If I can complete the task of the race, wonderful. If not, I have a lot of good times with good people, and I get to see a lot of the beauty this world gives us. And if I have a good, safe landing, it’s perfect.”