Note: this scenario is recommended
for players who want to teach the basic mechanics with a quick game.
A 1970 attempt in a helium balloon featured an envelope open at the bottom,
as for a hot air balloon, with a propane burner below.
Taking off from Long Island the Free Life piloted by Malcolm Brighton
and carrying crew Rod and Pamela Anderson, rode right into a storm
and went down off Newfoundland. They disappeared without a trace.
In 1976 noted balloon architect Ed Yost took off from Maine in the
Silver Fox and stayed aloft
for four and a half days. He was finally forced to ditch off Portugal, however.
He was rescued shortly thereafter, 530 miles short of the goal.
In 1978, the British balloon Zanussi
took off from Newfoundland.
Piloted by Don Cameron, later architect
of many of the around-the-world balloons, and Chris Davey,
their Rozier-style balloon developed
an eight-foot tear in the helium cell on the second day
and the precious gas began leaking out.
Nevertheless, they made impressive progress, but by the fifth day
winds would let them go no further and they splashed down in the Bay of Biscay,
just one hundred miles short of France.
Just a few weeks later, on August 11, the
American team of Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman,
flying Double Eagle II set out. Asked why he was doing it, Newman would only reply
"I do something a little crazy every day." Newman
was not only a balloonist, but also a hang glider enthusiast and planned
to fly down from the basket at the end of the flight.
The first two had already tried in the previous year, in a horribly
ill-prepared flight. Possibly because they were racing against Dewey Reinhard,
whose water ballast attempt in the Eagle was also to fail, not
all of the radio equipment was working, nor
had the pilots been fully-briefed on how to use it. Their briefing
missed other little things as well such as where the map of the Atlantic
had been stowed. Worse, no consideration had been made for the mountainous
terrain of Maine and eastern Canada which they crossed before entering the
Atlantic. This casual effort failed to bring clothes made
to withstand rain and storms or even plan seating for the pilots, which was
finally supplied by lawn chairs at the last moment. Not surprisingly, the
flight ended up ditching in a Force 8 storm featuring twenty foot swells
near Iceland, one of the participants suffering permanent effects of frostbite.
Despite these hair-raising results, the balloonists were eager try a
second attempt, which launched from Presque Isle, Maine, with an envelope,
too much of which was painted with reflective silver.
The result was that each day when the sun was highest in the sky
they lost altitude as the balloon was no longer being heated.
Continually jettisoning ballast to compensate, they ran into
freezing rain and at times the temperature dropped to zero degrees in their
open gondola.
Ice which formed on the upper part of the envelope at night
also forced release of more ballast. Even the hang glider had to be jettisoned.
Nevertheless they made excellent progress,
at times reaching 24,000 feet,
and although
they hoped to duplicate Lindbergh's landing in Paris, they decided to
safely touch down in a barley field
in Miserey, France (about sixty miles northwest of
Paris) after a voyage of some 137 hours. The trio were feted in Paris
—
Le Figaro calling them
ces merveilleux fous volants, "those marvelous flying idiots" —
and provided with the
embassy bedroom where Lindbergh had slept.
This triumph in 1979 inspired the revival of the James Gordon Bennett race
which had lapsed for forty-one years. The cross-country race
was won by the Abruzzo, Anderson, Newman
team flying in the Double Eagle III. It also inspired
in 1992 an Atlantic crossing race known as the Chrysler
Challenge. On the winning team was a then-little-known pilot by the name
of Bertrand Piccard.
Sadly Anderson did not live to see it as he had died in a ballooning accident in
1983 and Abruzzo too had died in a 1985 airplane crash. But see below, Continental Race
and Pacific Helium Race.
Crossing the Atlantic by balloon had long been a goal of balloonists
and five balloonists were to lose their lives in the fourteen to twenty-five attempts
(depending on how they are counted)
before it was finally conquered in 1978.
One curious try was that of the Small World in 1958.
This balloon was equipped with two propellers on the gondola which
were linked to a bicycle mechanism. The idea was to ascend and descend
without use of ballast or gas. Instead ballast would be provided by bringing
up water from the ocean. Also curious was that the attempt was to begin
in the Canary Islands and attempt to cross traveling west.
The crew of four Britons: pilot Arnold "Bushy" Eiloart, his son Tim, designer Colin Mudie
and his wife Rosemary soon found that the bicycle failed entirely and very
few of the other gadgets worked either. Still, they managed to travel about 1,200
miles in ninety-four hours.
Even more fortunately, their gondola was also seaworthy and they
finished up their journey by sea, reaching the Barbados after the ten more days.
Launch Sites:
Each Balloon begins on its own space, which is in the North American continent and
is not an island.
Starting Chits:
Each player begins with 3 Gas and 3 Ballast chits.
Winning the Race:
The winner is the first to cross into the next quadrant, i.e.
the one which runs through western Europe.
Special Rules:
Balloons may never voluntarily enter High altitude and
if forced there by Bad Weather, are automatically returned to Medium
at the start of their next turn.
Once the Atlantic was successfully crossed, it seemed natural
that someone would want to try crossing North America, which
though a longer trip, has the obvious advantage of being completely
overland. Accordingly,
the first non-stop transcontinental balloon flight over North
America was completed on May 12, 1980 by Maxie L. Anderson and
his son Kris. Their trip in the Kitty Hawk, lasting 99 hours and 54 minutes, launched
from Fort Baker, California and ended on the Gaspé Peninsula
in Quebec, Canada. Strictly speaking however, they had failed to reach
the actual Atlantic so another trip was undertaken by
John Shoecraft in his
humorously-titled Super Chicken balloons. In September he and
his, as you'll soon see ironically-named, co-pilot, Ron Ripps,
were forced to parachute out during a thunderstorm over Columbus, Ohio.
The second attempt was aborted in December when the envelope developed
a leak near Liberal, Kansas. Not deterred,
Super Chicken III launched
October 9, 1981 with Fred Gorell as co-pilot.
This 55-hour trip launched
at Costa Mesa, California and wound up on the historical Blackbeard's Island
off the coast of Georgia, completing the challenge to the satisfaction of everyone.
Launch Sites:
Each balloon begins on its own space, which is on the North American west coast,
i.e. a space containing both land and water.
Starting Chits:
Each player begins with 3 Gas and 3 Ballast chits.
Winning the Race:
The winner is the first to land their balloon in a land space
which also touches the Atlantic Ocean
on the other side of the first Quadrant line.
Special Rules:
Balloons may never voluntarily enter High altitude and
if forced there by Bad Weather, are automatically returned to Medium
at the start of their next turn.
The crossing of the Atlantic and North America provided a natural
inspiration to try the Pacific. Actually it had already been crossed
several times by balloons launched by Imperial Japan against the United
States during World War II, but manned flights would be a much more
complex matter.
Three who hailed from New Mexico -- Ben Abruzzo, Larry Newman, Ron Clark --
and Japanese-born Rocky Aoki (founder of the Benihana restaurant chain)
launched in 1981 from Nagashima, Japan.
Their trip in the Double Eagle V
was filled with threats and dangers including thunderstorms,
ice and helium leakage. Eighty-four hours after launching,
on November 13, 1981 they accomplished a rough landing in a wilderness
area near Covelo, California, half the gondola disconnecting in the process
and throwing the pilots into a pile like four ninepins.
Launch Sites:
Each balloon begins on its own space which lies within one of the
following countries
Japan, People's Republic of China, Japan, Republic of China (Taiwan),
or Korea.
Starting Chits:
Each player begins with 4 Gas and 4 Ballast chits.
Winning the Race:
The winner is the first to cross the heavy blue line which cuts through
Alaska and land their balloon in a space containing land.
Special Rules:
Balloons may never voluntarily enter High altitude and
if forced there by Bad Weather, are automatically returned to Medium
at the start of their next turn.
In 1987 Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand
undertook to cross the Atlantic in their hot-air balloon,
the Virgin Atlantic Flyer.
As they launched from the coast of Maine,
traveling at around 25,000 feet with a velocity of 100 miles per hour,
a propane tank fell off and was lost, causing the balloon to suddenly
shoot up in altitude. Fortunately they were able to correct this. Then, two hundred
miles off Gander, Newfoundland, they met an intense low-pressure front
that buffeted them for three hours. They resisted the temptation to
come down and stayed at 27,000 feet, getting through the turbulence, snow
and darkness, eventually coming through to clear air. By the time the
balloon reached Europe, it had flown so far and so fast that it still had
three full fuel tanks on board. Wanting avoid the danger of landing with
these on-board, Lindstrand brought them down over Northern Ireland intending
to release the tanks from a safe height, but he overdid it and crashed heavily
to the ground, breaking off the tanks. The resulting loss of two and a half
tons of ballast caused the balloon to take off like a rocket. The two
balloonists hurriedly decided
to ditch in the Irish Sea close to the English coast. As they touched water,
they fired explosive bolts to separate the capsule from the canopy, but
these failed to work. As a result the balloon was towing the capsule along the surface at
high speed and both prepared to jump. Lindstrand went, but Branson hesitated.
Branson was now soaring up at full-tilt to try to provide a soft landing.
Meanwhile,
none of the chase helicopters had seen Lindstrand go into the water.
Branson turned
off the burners and came down through cloud, to his immense relief
seeing the Royal Navy frigate HMS Argonaut below. He bailed out a few moments
before the capsule hit the sea and was rescued by a Royal Navy helicopter.
Fortunately he was able to
provide instructions on where to find Lindstrand who was shortly rescued as well.
The entire flight took 31 hours and 41 minutes.
After the likely crossings using gas-powered balloons had all been
accomplished, plucky balloonists turned to the trickier question of
crossing these areas employing only heated air.
Launch Sites:
Each balloon begins on its own space, which is in the North American continent and
is not an island.
Starting Chits:
Each player begins with 10 Fuel and 5 Ballast chits.
Winning the Race:
The winner is the first to cross into the next quadrant, i.e.
the one which runs through western Europe.
Special Rules:
In this scenario, a player must burn a Fuel chit each turn to maintain the current
altitude. Failing to do this returns the balloon to Low altitude.
Having conquered the Atlantic, Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand
now turned their attention to the challenge of piloting a hot-air
balloon over the Pacific.
Their balloon of 2.6 million cubic feet was launched from Miyakonojo, nearly
600 miles southwest of Tokyo. The first seven hours went well, until they decided
to dump the first empty fuel tank. To their horror, jettisoning the empty tank
also accidentally released two full ones, causing the balloon to soar up to 36,000 feet.
Fortunately they still had 35 hours of fuel remaining. They eventually found
themselves over the frozen tundra of Canada's Northwest Territories, but in the middle
of a 35-knot blizzard. They came down to 1000 feet to find their ground speed
was still at 30 miles per hour. They decided to land on a frozen lake. The capsule hit
the ice, they jettisoned the canopy
and slid to a stop. The outdoor temperature was -20 degrees F and the nearest
road 153 miles away. It was four hours before a helicopter picked them up.
Launch Sites:
Each balloon begins on its own space which lies within one of the
following countries
Japan, People's Republic of China, Japan, Republic of China (Taiwan),
or Korea.
Starting Chits:
Each player begins with 10 Fuel and 5 Ballast chits.
Winning the Race:
The winner is the first to cross the heavy blue line which cuts through
Alaska and land their balloon in a space containing land.
Special Rules:
In this scenario, a player must burn a Fuel chit each turn to maintain the current
altitude. Failing to do this returns the balloon to Low altitude.
A mythical trans-Eurasia helium-filled balloon
race should provide the players with some different challenges.
Launch Sites:
Each balloon begins on one of the numbered spaces behind the Quadrant line
in Europe.
Starting Chits:
Each player begins with 5 Gas and 5 Ballast chits.
Winning the Race:
The winner is the first to land their balloon in a land space beyond
the heavy blue line which cuts through Japan.
Special Rules:
Balloons may never voluntarily enter High altitude and
if forced there by Bad Weather, are automatically returned to Medium
at the start of their next turn.
The winner of each race is the Start player for the next one. In addition, at the start of each race, each player receives one extra Ballast, Fuel or Gas chit for each race won. The winner of the Campaign game is the player who has won the most races. If there a tie, the prize goes to the tied player who achieved the best final position in the Around-the-World Race.
Players wanting to simulate the initial attempts to encircle
the globe, i.e. numerous failures until the Breitling-3 finally
succeeded
(see Background),
can try the following rules changes to the usual game:
In Solitaire games, every third turn, after the player makes a Local Wind card play, turn up the top card of the Local Wind deck and apply it to the balloon. If the card contains a Misfortune or Quadrant symbol, the card is resolved as a Misfortune or new Quadrant card instead of its Local Wind portion.
To determine the score, the player must track the number of turns that has accumulated. This score is compared with the Victory Point Schedule listed with each scenario. Players may also enjoy keeping records and comparing with their own past performances, attempting to set new records, etc.
Victory Point Schedule
Victory Point Schedule
If there are an even number of players, i.e. either four or six,
the usual game may be played in partnership by teams of two.
This gives the players
some new considerations in their planning. For example, is it better
to help oneself or play a card to help the partner, or at least move
the pawn from the partner's color? In this scenario the following special rules
apply: