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Thank you for visiting my homepage.
I will introduce how to build my own
balloon and ballooning in this page.
Even though current content is not
enough to let you know the whole process of building my balloon, this page will
be regularly updated to make you interested in ballooning.
Feel free to give
your advice on making home-built balloon.
Have a nice day and soft landing.
Minsik Hur (hotair@naver.com)
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First Experience
Here, I would like to introduce my hobby, ballooning.
My first experience was in 1988 when I was in the military service.
I was on board of C130 troop
transport plane. I did not know how long I was on the plane because I didn't
have a watch. "5 minutes to jumping". "1 minute to jumping".
"Be in front of the door". After jump master's signal, we stood in the
aisle hanging our lives on the plane. With go-signal, 40 personnel jumped down
from the two doors at the same time. I felt it was a blink.
I felt like flying to the
opposite side of the plane. I counted minutes waiting for opening parachute.
"1, 2, 3, 4, check!" I saw upward and found my parachute opened.
"God!" I found that I was still alive without being nervous and
afraid. It was like a moment. I saw downward. The world looked like mine. I
felt free and the mountains looked like small hills where I played with my
friends long time ago. I looked around. All my fellows were hanging in the air.
They were swinging like a pendulum. They shouted each other. "Go that way,
I will go this way." All the beginners were afraid of colliding in the
air.
I should try to land. I felt
like falling free at enormously high speed when I felt close to the ground. I
turned my parachute to the direction of wind and safely landed. My first
experience was completed in 1988 without knowing that flying in the air becomes
my lifetime hobby.
For six years' military service,
I experienced another motivation for ballooning. I belonged to Psychological
Operation Group in National Defense. During the time, I sent a big balloon
containing commodities and leaflets to the North Korea. Because of it, I spent years looking at the sky, measuring wind
direction and speed, and flying balloons. One day, I felt I wanted to fly in
the air. Without recognizing, I gave myself to ballooning.
I flied in my balloon every
weekend. My colleagues or someone who contacts me through my homepage join
ballooning. Late afternoon on Friday, I leave Seoul with my balloon
in my van, stay one night in the ballooning area, and finally balloon at dawn.
I set pointer on the take-off area and open the balloon. I feed air by using a
ventilator to inflate the balloon. I heated the air by using a burner. The air
in the balloon gets hot and the air out of the balloon is still cold. Finally,
lift is generated to make the balloon fly.
After taking off, colleagues
look smaller and apartments look like spots on the ground. Clouds get closer to
my hands and I feel I can walk on the clouds. Mountains get closer and I
finally find the unknown world that I have wanted to reach after mountains and
mountains since I was a little boy.
When I have colleagues on board,
we talk over a cup of coffee. If you want to fly in the blue sky and let wind
take yourself somewhere you dream of, try with your family and lovers together.
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My Home-built Balloon
Why is it a soccer ball?
I have wanted to make my own
balloon. I always think about the shape of my balloon. In 1998, so called IMF
crisis, the company I worked for was hit by the national economic crisis and
about to be closed. For one year, demonstration against shutdown went on. For
almost one year, we had half day off or full day off. The staff had nothing to
do whole day. Every day strangled our necks.
For those days, I was affected
by the economic crisis and payment was reduced. But I thought I should make
advantage of the hard times and made up my mind to make my balloon. But what
shape? I wanted to symbolize my hope to recover the economic crisis which hit
me and the whole country. Yes! Year 2002 World Cup!
1988 Seoul Olympic was
a chance of Korea to show positive image to the world and a basis of economic development.
I think Soccer Ball Hot-Air Balloon can be a symbol of second economic development
and another chance to show positive image to the world which sees Korea as a failed country. And I think the soccer ball balloon will bring luck
to me.
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Design
There was no record that Koreans
designed hot-air balloons, but there were hot-air balloons built by Koreans by
copying the design of balloons built in other countries. I thought that
building a balloon by copying the balloon which was already built by others
does not mean anything to me. So I made up my mind to design it myself.
I started collecting materials
and thinking the way to build my balloon. First, I should calculate all the
figures that would be used for designing. I used a calculator. Hundreds of times,
recalculating was needed. I found something wrong and got nervous when I entered
the same figure two times. If I did something wrong and I could not find it,
there could be a possibility to do the whole process again after I cut fabric.
Using CAD
I thought calculating all the
figures myself was waste of time. So I decided to use CAD. After office hours,
I leaned how to use CAD. Even after that, redesigning was needed many times.
Nevertheless, using CAD saved much time.
Getting Materials
I prepared a list of materials
and bought them. Buying materials was not easy at all because there was no information
on which fabric was produced by which Korean company. Every weekend I went to
the Busan Jin market and the Daegu fabric market. I made phone calls to many
companies hundreds of times which produces fabric.
Cutting
I cut the fabric according to
the figures I calculated. I did it in the basement of the company building I
worked for. A 1000m long fabric should be cut into 500 pieces. I spent more
than 100 hours cutting.
Sewing
I spent several months sewing a
25,000m fabric. Industrial sewing machine was used. When the machine got out of
order, I repaired it myself because I had no time to make a repairman to do it.
Suspension Cable Length, etc.
I calculated suspension cable length and skirt dimension with CAD. The figures
were correct.
Fabric Retention Test
Safety was the most important
factor to be considered. My balloon was designed based on FAR (Federal Aviation
Regulations) 31. I found the materials complying with it. Fabric retention and
sealing were tested by Korean Fabric Test Center. Finally, the completed balloon passed the test.
Pentagons and Hexagons
You can see 12 pentagons on a
soccer ball. But I needed to draw 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons by hand on a
white fabric. Originally, it was designed to be composed of 12 pieces of
pentagons and 20 pieces of hexagons. But I worried the safety of the balloon
and the imbalance of power inside the balloon if I sewed the pieces. So I
decided to make a white balloon first and to draw them. But how could I do it? Every
day after work, I had a close look at a soccer ball thousands of times. And
finally I got the right way to do it.
Completion
After completing my balloon, I
just felt calm. Now I think what I have been through to make was more exciting
than what I found after completing my balloon.
Test Flying
I wanted to show my balloon to
as many people as possible. So I tried to get the approval of Han River-side
office to fly my balloon there. But it was not approved. Finally I flied my
hot-air balloon at Hyun Ri, in Kyunki
province. When my balloon was in the air, it did not look like a soccer ball.
For one week, I repaired it. At Changwon, in Kyung-nam province, I saw the
completed soccer ball-shaped hot-air balloon flying in the air.
Registration
Certification of safety was
acquired from NAC December 16th 1999. My hot-air
balloon was registered to Korean Ministry of Construction and Traffic
(currently Ministry of Construction and Transportation). The registration
number was S5046. My balloon became the first officially registered home-built
balloon in Korean air sports history.
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