Smoothly and upwards

To buy them is a very expensive pleasure, but in our country already there is thirty of them. They cost about 50,000 dollars, and they constitute a small boom: this year will be in Argentina three regatas, everything a spectacle even for those who will watch it from down.

From the ignorance of our mortal condition, whatever it has flown in globe could describe the experience like the sensation of a soul that is come off the body. On the feet, a parade of landscapes with unfolding of forests, seeded rivers or fields conforms a succession of ephemeral moments. Later, the memory will make them eter to us.

Enough good explained Jorge Luis Borges in its Atlas , although there are some that consi- would deran useless to relate the experiences of a fact nonshared. "If somebody ignores the peculiar happiness of a globe stroll - it was excused once -, is difficult that I can explain it to it".

Nevertheless, after the flight next to Maria Kodama in California, the writer I synthesize ': "As they demonstrate the dreams to it, as they demonstrate the angels to it, to fly is one of the elementary anxieties of the man. Certainly the airplane does not offer anything that is looked like the flight. It is not resembled the flight of the birds nor the flight of the angels. The terroríficos predictions of the personnel side, with their ominous enumeration of oxygen masks, of lateral doors of exit and impossible aerobatics are not, nor can be favorables. The clouds cover and retract the continents and the seas. The passages are contiguous with the boredom. The globe, however, us depara the conviction of the flight, the agitation of the friendly wind, the proximity of the birds… ".

Two centuries after the first human flight, the basic principle of the aerostat does not reveal significant samples of evolution: an air basket, cover and a burner. The engineers and constructors are concentrated in perfecting the burners to improve the combustion and to diminish the noise at the moment for releasing the gas.

In the absent silence of helix and turbines, the pilots of the 2000 rise in their globes as pomps of soap to the drift of the same form that, under the overwhelmed glance of Maria Antonieta, a crew integrated by a rooster, a duck and a ewe rose to 12 meters of height on the gardens of Versailles in 1782.

The glory of the first flight, after the vehemence of Icaro and the imagination of Leonardo gives Vinci, corresponded to the Montgolfier brothers, who by force of combustion of paper made raise the animals on a globe of tafetán of Lyon. Later the combustion of straw and wool was used; until, in this century, the propano replaced to hydrogen.

The romanticism, that still grants his I pull ahead to the activity, had its parenthesis of practicidad when, inflated with helium, the French Navy used them during World War I for its missions of observation of the enemy.

They say that the apple of Newton who inspired to Joseph Montgolfier did not fall on its head, but that subio '; and in fact it was not an apple, but a shirt that flight overcame on the chimney of its house. Today, the nation that conquered the air calls to globes montgolfiers , paying tribute to the creative genius of the brothers. The first human flight also has French seal, with name, last name and precise date: the 21 of November of 1783, Jean François Pilatre de Rozier knew the glory - and the death, in his attempt to cross the channel of Mancha- in the conquest of the airspace.

In the art to furrow skies, the pilot cannot command his direction, the technology cannot equal the man, whose ability will indicate that it raises or it lowers looking for the best airflow, the direction varies according to the altitude.

The pilot - considering the most propitious land for the approach of the vehicle that will load the deflated globe he combines his skill and to savoir faire at the moment for landing.

According to the conditions and the professional wrist, earth with a small blow in dry, or a series of small jumps can be touched, as much as to end up dragging the basket on the ground. Thus, before the uncertainty of not knowing where it is going away to lower, the tradition arose to take a bottle of champagne to offer the owner of the Earth in which it is landed.

Rolf Hossinger and Gilberto Riega released the Argentine licenses numbers one and two, the 29 of December of 1973, originating in the country the activity of hot-air balloons with a globe Piccard of 1600 cubic meters that the pioneers brought of the United States.

"activity in practically any flat place becomes - it synthesizes Waters, official instructor with several prizes in aeromodelling and pilot of airplane -. the globe floats in the air and it moves with the course of the wind and to its same speed. The ascents can be of the captive type, in which the globe is subject to earth by two or three ropes that limit the route like a low elevator that raises and; or it frees, where the pilot regulates his height with the judicious application of the heat." Like the wings of Icaro, the heat also melts the intentions of globes; then high a room temperature makes difficult the difference necessary to overcome flight.

The well-known principle of Archimedes provides the theoretical foundation: "All body submerged in a gas upwards experiences an equal push to the weight of the volume of gas that evacuates". Consequence: if the body weighs more than the volume of gas that evacuates, falls; if it weighs equal, one stays; and if it weighs less, one rises.

The physical space to initiate a flight is not greater than a square of 50 meters of side. Globes have volumes practical from 1600 to 3500 cubic meters, whose air is warmed up with burners fed with propano gas that takes in special tanks located in the log of the globe, where also go the pilot and the passengers. The main operative limitation is the intensity of the wind, reason why always it leaves to the dusk; or early, in the morning.

According to esteem Luis Laiún, president of the Aerostatic Association Argentina, in the country has around thirty globes. The small thing of the number responds to that the high thing of the costs falls on the backs of the fans, unlike which it happens in the United States and Europe, where the globes is institutional and represents one of the best advertising resources.

A globe costs approximately 50,000 pesos and tells on 500 800 flight hours, like life utility. The one hundred pesos that are received to each passenger per flight hour, or the 500 which they are received to a company by the auspice of his mark, cover as soon as the amortization.

While here the most anecdotal data could describe than the biggest globe of the country has a height equivalent to a building of ten floors, in the rest of the world are constructed works of art with forms of slippers, motos, the most unusual bottles of beer and designs, than they do more of this one one of the disclosed advertising resources.

The madness of the air overcame flight when, to the 78 years, the North American millionaire Malcolm Forbes discovered the aerostatic passion when flying for the first time and ordered Don Cameron to construct a globe with the form of his wanted properties more: its Harley Davidson, his castle in Normandía and a bust of Beethoven, among others of its lucky objects.

Although nobody dares to speak of a boom in Argentina, they mean the meetings that all Mondays they summon to enthusiastic and fans in the aerostatic seat of Anchorena 275 much. Thanks to their spirit, the National Championship of Ceballos River (May), the Regata de Luján (September) and the one of Chapel of the Gentleman (October) marked 1996 like a year favorable: before three regatas had been made never in a same year. And the participation of a twenty of globes in the next National Championship of Ceballos River is considered, to be made in the week from the 21 to the 25 of May.

To the margin of the small fortune that makes lack to buy a globe, the approval is needed the Air Force to fly it; the institution also demands such requisite technicians of security that stops a Boeing 747.

Norberto Barozza is pilot and instructor of globe, glider and transport of air line. And he not only carried out successfully the aerial challenge from a transport airplane during the War of the Falklands, but that, along with Rolf Hossinger, is indicated like one of the wanted personages more of the aerostatic atmosphere. All they know it like the Commodore.

Émulo of Eduardo Newbery counts: "the 2 of April of 1987 we made the first globe crossing on the River of the Silver. We made three globes, of flags altogether Uruguayan, Spanish and Argentine, like beginning of the festejos by the 500 years of the Discovery of America ". The same feat that took to the disappearance of the Pampero and Newbery, when this one tried to reach the glory with a nocturnal flight on waters.

In the world, aerofans is entertained making aerobatics, like maintaining the balance on a cord from a globe to another one, to more than 4000 meters of height; crossing desolate sands of the desert of the Sahara, and until overcoming flight submerged in the depth of the water.

Two centuries after the invention of the Montgolfier brothers, the globes have not undergone too many modifications

In his resounding Return to the world in 80 days , they gentleman Phileas Fogg used all means of transport: thrown horse trains, cars, merchant boats, an elephant to cross India… and until a candle sleigh; although the crossing of the globe Atlantic as soon as it was a resource imagined in the desperation to arrive on time at London. But Julio Verne removed the desire from an odyssey by airs with his globe Viaje , as well as Wells gave loose rein to his imagination with selenitas that were transferred of one to another side of the globe moon like ours.

Much red has spilled the writers on the matter. It is that on board the time acquires a special dimension. There moments able are discovered to surround the life with I pull ahead of serenity. The dream is broken hardly by the smooth breeze in the face and the sporadic one to rugir of the gas, that each as much disturbs pastar of some cow there down.

The imperceptible, almost natural ascent. The noblest way to sail skies. Silence. The perfect images of a distant earth. The limits of the contemplation are confused in the magical and unreal thread of a soul that is come off the body. Although later, perhaps, the forced landing arrives.

(1) the mark consists of a bag of rice or sand, that weighs 60 grams. It has a fabric tail of 1.70 ms of length and 10 centimeters wide. It is of red, yellow color or orange, to easily discover it in case of landing in seeded land.

Prices (variable, according to amount of passengers): from $ 45, captive flights; and $ 120, free flights of one hour.

D ónde to buy a globe

(*) Unicas factories recognized in Argentina by the National Direction of Airworthiness.