Lubao Int'l Balloon and Music Festival 2019: A lesson in flight, shape, and wind direction told through a hot air balloon ride

I have been diligently documenting the Lubao Hot Air Balloon Festival for the past several years, so for 2019, I decided to come early.

I wanted to catch the first day of preparation, which is where I got served my first lesson from the event: It is during preparation when we often meet chaos and try to make sense of it.

I went to the usual meeting gate, where media partners, pilots, and chase crew converge but this time, we were..barred from entering.

At a little past noon, I finally get my pass. I meet Paola, the main person of the organizing team and of course I tell her what happened.

Here is my second lesson of the day: Sometimes, you  only need to voice out your concern to iron out a few problems. People are not mind readers and there really is a lot to take care of.

That night, I was informed that the Governor of Pampanga, Nanay Lilia — also the founder of Lubao Hot Air Balloon and Music Festival — Town Mayor Mylyn Pineda Cayabyab, met with the organizers to, well, iron out the kinks.

On Saturday morning, I managed to get to the location for the 4am call time. I met with Kim, our contact person in charge of keeping my ticket and I was immediately told to stay close to the host balloon. It will ascend the moment the wind stabilizes.

While waiting on the gondola, a Taiwanese pilot named Evelyn Chen, gave me my third lesson: The wind direction may not allow our balloon to take off, she said making me realize sometimes, things really are not in our control.

Feeling sad and watching other balloons take off, Evelyn approached me a few minutes later with good news: our balloon may take off after all. “It won’t be that high, and we will have to wait a few more minutes but we might just be able to,” she said.

Yet another lesson: Sometimes, we really just have to try.

At around 400 feet (0.12 km) above ground, Evelyn said that a balloon on average needed at least three tanks of propane gas to stay afloat in the sky for one hour. One tank contains about 90 pounds of profane. Talk about effort!

Our balloon features a special shape. It can reach up to 33,000 feet (ca. 10 km) but that will need more than three tanks of propane. It will need special equipment like oxygen and safety body device to avoid pushing out of the basket. Its envelope, the fabric that makes the balloon, is made out of special nylon that can withstand the heat of the burner.

Because of wind conditions, plus its shape, our balloon could not last long up in the air. The sky is already dodged with gas, already blinding the other pilots. It wasn’t only not smart. It was not safe.

We only stayed in the air a little more than 10 minutes and descended only few meters from where we took off. That’s a ton-load of lessons I’m still trying to process, TBH.

But the most insightful of the lot might be what came after the hot air balloon ride: I never imagined folding the fabric would take five times the time and effort of takeoff.

According to Evelyn, specially shaped balloons are very complicated to fold since the air is scattered to parts which are vital to the dynamics of the balloon. I've seen in close range that these were attached through velcro and carefully aligned. The time of folding is almost the same time of the entire preparation.

No doubt that it's expensive to operate a hot air balloon.  According to the team, this particular balloon cost about P8 million.

It needed a 4-wheel drive to carry the loads and took it back to the station.

Evelyn gave me a certificate, an official document that they give to whoever rode their balloon which is a form of gesture and a courtesy. — LA, GMA News