You may remember in the last newsletter our article about the Utrecht Fair in Holland, and that customers had a chance to win a Balloon trip if they guessed the secret combination to a 4 digit pin code on the door of an ICT enclosure.
The five lucky winners with their companion and our Dutch sales team set off in one of Europe’s biggest hot air balloons on a beautiful Saturday evening for what proved to be quite an eventful trip.
As you know hot air balloons are not the easiest things to steer, so predicting where you are going to land is not always totally up to the pilot.
Wandering into another countries air space is not actively encouraged as you tend to get arrested, so when our balloon rapidly closed in on the German border, we did get a little anxious, because having your customers “taken in for questioning” didn’t bode well for the perfect prize event!
As it happens, and after a few swift glances towards the heavens, our preyers were answered and we were back on course.
Apart from the occasional sound of the burner it is amazing how peaceful everything is when you’re up in a hot air balloon. The views are amazing and you certainly get a different prospective on the world below you.
Unmanned hot air balloons are popular in Chinese history. Zhuge Liang of the Shu Han kingdom, in the Three Kingdoms era (220-280 AD) used airborne lanterns for military signaling. These lanterns are known as Kongming lanterns. There is also some speculation that hot air balloons could have been used by people of the Nazca culture of Peru some 1500 years ago, as a tool for designing the famous Nazca ground figures and lines. The first documented balloon flight in Europe was by the Portuguese priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão. On August 8, 1709, in Lisbon, Bartolomeu de Gusmão managed to lift a small balloon made of paper full of hot air about 4 meters in front of king John V and the Portuguese court.
On
January 15,
1991, the Virgin Pacific Flyer balloon completed the longest flight in a hot air balloon when
Per Lindstrand and
Richard Branson flew 7,671.91 km (4,767.10 miles) from
Japan to Northern
Canada. Designed to fly in the trans-oceanic
jet streams the Pacific Flyer recorded the highest ground speed for a manned balloon at 394 km/h (245 mph).
This may have been the closest Eldon has been to causing an international incident; in future we will be content with shipping enclosures internationally and perhaps a quiet BBQ to start what was certainly a memorable journey!
To find out more about what events Eldon NV will be planning in the future, please contact Marketing Manager Alex Sprenger at
alex.sprenger@eldon.com.
Eldon’s not only moving forwards, but upwards!