Special Shape Balloons

Since the early days of the renaissance of Hot Air Ballooning in the 1960's and 70's, balloon manufacturers and designers have created increasingly complicated balloons shaped to suit a special requirement.

Beethoven's head hovers over a Japanese Pagoda

To achieve these stunning shapes a variety of techniques are used to hold the fabric at the required position.

The original publisher of the Forbes 500 magazine, Malcolm Forbes had a stunning collection of special shapes. Every time he visited a country, he commissioned a special shape to "honour" the country. So there was an Elephant for India, a Pagoda for Japan, A Sphinx for Egypt and the Santa Maria for Spain. When he was alive he organised an annual festival of some of these shapes at his Chateaux Balleroy in Northern France.

Also from the Forbes Collection are these two balloons that are over 120 feet high.

Looking up inside Beethoven's head you can see the baffles of fabric used to maintain the correct shape

An Elephant hot air balloon for India

Suliman The Turkish Emperor

A beautiful Mcaw

A Sphinx balloon for Egypt

Pilots have a love/hate relationship with special shapes as they are difficult to inflate without burning them, often take lots of room to come to a stop because the deflation system is compromised by the balloons shape and take ages to pack away (ask the crew about that, the pilot will be unlikely to know anything about packing away!).

Oh Dear, the stern has gone up, leaving the bow unpressurized

Here are a series of pictures showing the problems first hand.

Forbe's Santa Maria is a very tricky special shape to inflate because of all the bits that stick out from the middle. If one bit comes up before the others it can be impossible to get the other parts to "pressurize" with hot air and thus assume their correct shape. Experienced pilot Mike Moore from Bristol really had a battle on his hands when inflating at Chateaux Balleroy in the 1990's.

More Hot Air fails to help the situation	Grand Dame of the Seas looks rather forlorn
Time to deflate and start again.	Almost fully pressurized and ready for take off
Almost fully pressurized and ready for take off

The Sydney Opera House Balloon comes in to land

And then there are the landings. Whilst Kim Hull was Cloud Hopping across Austrialia the legendary Everest balloon pilot Chris Dewhirst from Melbourne in Australia was flying a special shape designed to represent the Sydney Opera House. With all the "artwork" on the top, the conventional parachute could not be put on the top of the balloon. A side dump was placed below the artwork, but as hot air rises, this was not a particularly effective or rapid deflation system. Fortunately in Australia a "paddock" is about a 200 acre field. Good job, as the balloon took all that to stop in.

As the balloon touches down the pilot furiously pulls on the side	The dump is opened some more. Note the other balloon basket in front!
You can see the light of the sun on the right side of the balloon showing the dump being opened.	And some more as the balloon thunders across the paddock, throwing up dust everywhere
The balloon continues to drag	And then spinnakers, picking up more speed before coming to a stop, some 150 yards from it's initial touch down.

Special shapes have been made into all sorts of shapes. Often they will be used to promote a household brand or consumer product. Here are a few.

Club Orange "Can" balloon. If you look carefully you can see the panel at the top of the balloon used to deflate it.	Club Orange "Can" stands about 100 feet tall.
Frutti Strawberry Balloon	Ariel washing liquid
KP Choc Dips