AX-5 Duration World Record Flight 12 hours, 21 minutes, 36 seconds

Thursday, Feb. 8, 2001, 6am - Pilot Bill Cloninger and five crew… Jerry Kest, Pat Karl, Chuck Holt, Ron Stroup and myself…left Cleveland for a 16-hour drive to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We expected to encounter some bad weather, but didn't realize we would be driving into the worst storm of the season in the midwest. It began with thick fog, then pouring rain, which quickly turned the roads to ice as the temperature dropped. We soon found ourselves sitting in miles of traffic on I-80, west of Des Moines, behind a couple of semi's that had jack-knifed across the icy road. There was continuous freezing rain as we waited, which turned to sleet just as we started moving again (after 3 hours). Luckily, the sleet had a little more traction than the black ice and we were able to continue driving. We thought we had seen the worst of it, but soon encountered heavy blowing snow. By this time, most people had heeded the warnings on the radio and had gotten off the roads, so we were forced to drive through several inches of snow in near white-out conditions on roads that had not seen any traffic for awhile so we didn't even have tracks to follow. After driving through the storm for several hours with such low visibility, Ron Stroup concluded that he now most likely would qualify to receive his instrument rating. Conditions gradually got better as we got closer to Sioux Falls and we finally dragged into the hotel parking lot at 4am local time. Our 16-hour trip had taken 23 hours. By this time, the temperature was a bone chilling -5F, so we unloaded all electronics and temperature sensitive equipment out of the vehicles. Exhausted, we fell into bed at 5am, with instructions to be up at 9am to go to pick up the balloon system at Aerostar, where it was being stored. At that point, our projected launch time was midnight, so we expected to get some sleep the next afternoon, but soon learned from Lou Billones that the weather system Bill needed for his attempt would be over the area between 7pm and 8pm.

Friday, Feb. 9, 2001, 9am - Bill stayed in bed to get as much sleep as possible before his flight. The rest of us loaded the envelope, basket, and tanks into the trailer, then quickly went to breakfast, knowing it was probably the last hot meal we would have for awhile. Some of the crew decided to take a quick nap, while the rest of us organized and assembled all the equipment we would be taking to the launch site. We had been working on an APRS system to track both the balloon and the vehicles. The electronics involved are very complicated, but luckily, several of our crew are radio wizards and were able to get all the equipment installed and running in a short period of time. Our last job before going to the launch site was to make a run for sub sandwiches to hold us through the night. At 5pm we drove to a heated trucking warehouse in Tea, SD, owned by a local balloonist, Vern Feekes. We were able to drive inside to do a pre-flight set up of the basket, tanks, etc. (The thick layer of ice that had covered the vehicles from the ice storm the previous day finally started melting). We pressurized the tanks then installed them, as well as any other equipment that could be mounted before going back out into the frigid cold. At 6:30, we drove a short distance to Tea Airport, just SW of Sioux Falls, for the inflation. Although the pavement at the airport was dryer than anywhere else I had been in Sioux Falls, it was still very icy. Everyone had to be especially careful while walking. By the end of the trip, all but two of the crew had fallen. We had a lot of help on inflation from local pilots, Aerostar personnel and dealers who were in town for a meeting. We set everything up ready to inflate, then waited a few minutes in an airport office for the wind to die down. At 8 pm we began to inflate the balloon, attaching the last two tanks and all electronic equipment after it was standing up. Nightstar I launched at 8:19 pm under a full moon and headed toward the southeast. The crew, including NAA Observer Orv Olivier and local pilot, Mike Leimbach, soon packed up and left the field with Bill still in sight. Everything seemed to be working as planned…except for the APRS tracker we had put in the balloon. This was very frustrating because it had been tested at home and it had been turned on and was working just prior to the launch. Fortunately, the APRS trackers in both vehicles worked perfectly which made the chase much easier. We were even able to message each other and had the ability to send messages to Kent Rothermel and Cynthia Hatfield at the communication center in Cleveland using the Winaprs software. This was perfect, because cell phone coverage was very poor. Although we weren't getting transmissions from the balloon, whenever we got directly under it, we would get a GPS reading and manually input the data into the computer so Lou Billones and the communication center, as well as anyone else who logged on to findu.com, could track the flight. Jerry Kest drove the primary chase vehicle, masterfully turning around on dead-end snow-covered streets and keeping us from sliding around on the ice-covered roads. Orv Olivier, as observer, did a great job communicating with Bill and cheering him on. Pat Karl ran the APRS tracking system and ground communication radio, while I did what I do best…used the paper maps and kept a running copy of all data (all that observer training really came in handy!). Chuck Holt did an excellent job of driving the second vehicle (tank retrieval), always keeping up with Bill. Ron Stroup ran the computer and communication radio, while Mike Leimbach did an absolutely awesome job of looking out for powerlines and advising Bill of obstacles ahead. To us, it looked like Bill had a perfect flight profile, and later he confirmed this by saying it was one of the best flights he's ever had. From both his view and ours it looked beautiful…a full moon and glistening snow…well, it was beautiful as long as we didn't get out of the vehicle…it was cold! Temperatures during the flight ranged from -10F to -2F. The dirt roads were mostly ice covered. We found several roads that had drifted over with snow and were not passable at all, as well as one road that had been plowed only as far as the farmer's driveway. As the propane tanks were emptied, Bill lowered them to the ground to be retrieved. Although all tanks were dropped near the roads making retrievals easy, one tank buried itself under the snow on landing, which made it difficult to immediately locate. After a few hours of flight, Pat Karl and I started discussing whether Bill should drop the heavy APRS box, when all of a sudden we got a data packet from the balloon!

Saturday, Feb. 10, 2001 - Gradually, throughout the night, the APRS unit began to send data more frequently, although never at the 5-minute interval that it had been set at. Bill continued to fly south toward Sioux City, Iowa. At 5am, as we were discussing where and when to cross the Missouri River, Bill turned west, then started heading back north again. We took a quick break at a gas station (the only one we found open that night), and then quickly caught up with him. At 6am he got ready to drop his next to last tank. As fuel consumption on this tank was much better than projected, we were confident that he would be flying for many more hours on the last tank, and we could finally relax and get some needed rest. But, as the sun came up, we got a report from Bill that he was experiencing burner problems, including substantial icing, and the fuel gauge showed only 10% fuel remaining in the last tank. It was not quite 8am, and he had to fly just past 8:30 to beat the existing record. Did he have enough fuel left? Could we have come so far, through months of preparation, not to mention the bad weather and no sleep, to lose it at the very end? Suddenly it was very quiet in the vehicles. Everyone was praying or had fingers crossed or whatever it is one does to try to make something happen. We glanced from the clock to the balloon and back to the clock, watching the minutes tick by, wondering how much longer he could keep the balloon airborne. Orv Olivier calculated exactly how much time beyond the existing record Bill needed to fly and, at 15 seconds, he started a countdown. When he was done, everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief, then began blowing the vehicle horns and congratulating Bill. The celebratory mood was over quickly though, as we knew Bill would land soon and the last wind speed we had gotten was 19mph (off the APRS, which was now working perfectly! It must have been all that praying). We saw big hummers ahead and knew he would not try to fly over them so we raced to the next section road to catch up with him. As we came over the rise, we saw the balloon just coming to a stop after a perfect rip-out landing. He had beaten the previous record by 15 minutes (after the flight, we determined that there was still one gallon of fuel remaining in the tank, enough to fly about another 30 minutes or so). We started across the field to assist with the pack-up, some of us still falling on the icy road or in the snow crusted with a layer of ice. As we finished packing the envelope into the bag, the landowner drove up in his tractor with front-end loader and offered to help. He picked up the envelope bag, then the basket and brought them back to the trailer. I had planned to have a champagne celebration at the landing site, but by this time the winds were very strong and the wind chill was affecting everyone so we quickly got back into the vehicles and headed back to Sioux Falls. The first stop was at the hotel so everyone could use the facilities, then on to the Aerostar meeting to share the outcome of the flight with those who had come out to watch the launch the previous night. The crew took a quick vote to decide what we wanted more…sleep or food. It was 7 to 1 for food and we went on to our first meal since the previous morning. Though we were exhausted, we had to get all the equipment reorganized for the trip back home. As we were planning to leave early in the morning and didn't want to do this job in the dark, we decided to stay up just a little longer and get it done. After a great dinner at a local steakhouse we finally got back to our rooms at 7pm. Some of us had been up for 34 hours!

Sunday, Feb. 11,2001, 7am - We finished packing up the vehicles and connected the tracking system. After all the excitement of the previous 3 days, the trip home was blissfully uneventful and we pulled back into Cleveland at 11pm on Sunday. For Bill Cloninger and the Nightstar I crew, as well as those at home who were involved with the project, it was truly an excellent adventure!

Thanks to all the folks at Aerostar who designed and built this incredible tiny balloon. Special thanks to Orv Olivier, Martin Harms, Matt Weiderkehr, Tom Kaupf, and Aerostar for allowing us to borrow equipment for this project. In addition, Bill and I wish to thank the spouses and families of all our team members for their support in allowing the devotion of time and effort by our team members to making this adventure truly wonderful.