ballons for rigging

A few years ago Chad Brey and I sat down and calculated the lift needed to support a climber above a tree. The size of the balloon was HUGE!!!

Ask the FAA if they'd allow you to use a balloon over an area where most of us do treework.
 
That pic was 44 helium balloons for a human.
Show up with a tank of gas and start the party.
I'm thinking of either tip on scetchy trees or angled speed/zip lines for bad lz's. Rig the balloons with respect to wind and such. Shoot em down when party is over!

10k capacity dirigable is the dream.
 
[ QUOTE ]
That pic was 44 helium balloons for a human.
Show up with a tank of gas and start the party.
I'm thinking of either tip on scetchy trees or angled speed/zip lines for bad lz's. Rig the balloons with respect to wind and such. Shoot em down when party is over!

10k capacity dirigable is the dream.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not to be a stick in the mud... but are you off your meds or something?
 
Gotta dream.

There is a company I read about, in maybe the economist, that is attempting to produce two classes of dirigables that will compete with current helicopters in the realms of lifting.

I've had enough remote site/sketchy tree jobs to want something above me, any other ideas? Cranes can not get every where and helicopters are pricey.
 
Why would it be absolutely necessary to lift a tree out with ballons or dirigibles. If a crane or chopper can't do it then lower the pieces out. What do you think they did before cranes and choppers. They had ballons then, why didn't they use them?
 
Now we got this helium shortage, would it be a hot air deally? A dirigible seems like it would be just as expensive as a helicopter. Though, I have no experience with either.
 
The helium works well to get your voice into a pitch range that can allow you to communicate clearly over the noise of chippers and saws, too.

Just stay away from the hydrogen model...
 
The one man bosun seat hot air balloon looks like a blast. I remember popular science proposing a hybrid blimp/copter for low impact harvesting of trees.
 
I've had the idea to tie into a hot air balloon for about 3 yrs now. Still hoping for the perfect scenario; very brittle tree, no acess at ALL. Has to be peiced out in sections due to structures nearby. Got it planned out.
 
A couple of weekends ago I drove the chase truck for a hot air balloon.

Part of my job was to help setup the balloon and gondola. It was a very particular process...like treework. Life depends on things being 100%.

It takes a lot of space to setup a balloon that only holds up to four people. They don't go upwind though.

How does anyone propose using a balloon-type lift if you can't fly the thing to your work zone?

The personal balloons are intriguing. Smaller envelope too. Inflate, saddle up and use three-way belays to float over a hazard tree. I could see using an SRT system so that the envelope is up there---^ out of harms way. Cut and drop everything.
 
While I'm working during the day, my mind is constantly going, sometimes I think of old threads and think, I really should look that thread up and contribute more to it....

well, I typed in "balloon" as the search word to find this one again.

I felt it would have been good to add these pictures to this thread.

We did this job in about March or early April in 2012.

Used a balloon to lift a gopro camera on a line to record some of my rope rigging.

335961-arbor-xballooncamSMALL.jpg
 

Attachments

  • 335961-arbor-xballooncamSMALL.webp
    335961-arbor-xballooncamSMALL.webp
    312.8 KB · Views: 30
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Back
Top Bottom