Test Flight Lands Safely

November 9, 1996

Flanigan, Nevada: Due to a leak in the balloon's fabric, the Virgin Global Challenger test flight came to an end sooner than expected, after just a 5-hour flight north of Reno, Nevada. "It was a wonderful landing. What made it interesting is that it was a combo hot air and gas landing. On our first approach we shot back up, but then we came in for a nice landing just off the road," said pilot Marsha Neal. The road was a remote dirt road some 40 miles north of Reno in a town called Flanigan, a ghost town in the middle of a dry grass valley.



Chuck Foster, co-pilot of the balloon commented, "We wanted to land before we found ourselves in the mountains at midnight." Landing at night can be very tricky, as the darkness can obscure the ground below. Says Chuck, "We're still happy with the flight. Koh Murai was gathering data from the moment we took off. I figure we got a good two and half hours of data gathering." Because the leak was so large, Marsha believes that it may have occurred at the top of the balloon where the rip panels are.



What happens now? Launch Master Bruce Erickson says, "We'll do a postmortem on the AM7 just like you'd do for any aircraft. You peel every layer back and document what you find. They'll unload the data logger today and compare its on-board data with the pilots' notes." Will they try to fly this 77,000-cubic-foot system again? "I don't believe we have time," says Erickson. "We have a smaller 22,000-foot system, an AM2, that the pilots will fly in the upcoming week to gather more data, but our time constraints for the global flight preclude us from doing Per [Lindstrand's] high altitude record attempt or other test flights in the AM7." Erickson will fly to the launch site in Marrakech, Morocco on Sunday to begin preparing the location for the launch of Virgin Global Challenger's 1.1 million cubic foot around-the-world balloon. The team feels confident that data gathered on the test flight, although it was only a five hour flight, will help them gauge how much propane fuel they'll need for the global flight. Erickson adds, "I also think the fact that (the test balloon) flew safely—we had a safe launch, a safe flight, and a safe landing—there's a lot to be said about that."

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