[balloon-makers] new to the list

[Arnaud Deramecourt <private e-mail address>]

Hi people,

I am from France, where we can built balloons without trouble. It is not
the case in some countries of Europe.

I started ballooning in 1994. After two years in a student ballooning
association, I bought a second hand Cameron (from 1977). This balloon
was a bit porous despite the fact the envelopped has only 130hrs logged.
Perhaps a bad (and long) storage. After a two monthes placement by Sky
Balloons Limited (Wales), I decided that it was not very difficult to
built a balloon. And I decided that I do not want to spend the amount of
money the balloon manufacturers ask to sell a balloon.

I began the projet of building myself a balloon at the beginning of
1997. The big question was "how to compute without miscalculation the
panels ?". The process of writing the computer software, testing it with
a 1,9 cu.m model, finding a good supplier of fabric, of load tapes...
took me the whole year. The cutting was manual.

At the end of 1997, taking exemple on the "BBJ" of Bob LeDoux (I thank
Bob for the idea he gave to me), I started to print a "bulletin de
construction amateur" (bulletin about homebuilding). This bulletin is
only in french. It is still edited. Next issue is #13 (for april).

In 1998, I made my firt balloon "POLUX", a 1600 cu.m. I did a "boland
like basket" for this balloon (according to some pictures I took during
"Lorraine 1997"). I fly with a colt 2 burner (and 20 years old colt
basket).

In 2000, in the aim to fly in the Alps, I built a 3000 cu.m. and a
traditional rottan basket. "KASTOR" was born ! For that I used the same
software as for my first balloon. A friend of mine could help me with a
special cutting machine he use generally to cut stratospheric polyester
balloons. So I improved the software to generate ".dxf" files of each
panel and for tablature.

My goal for the year is : flying, and flying.

As next project, I am interested in building a gas balloon and a small
gas airhip. But, I have difficulties to find good and affordable
fabrics. One other and more attainable goal is to upgrade my colt2
burner in changing the jets in multijets (to reduce noise). Does anyone
has already tried this ?

For those who are interested, I invite you to watch :
http://aerostation.free.fr/mfr
Be carefoul ! Everything is in french !

You can freely download the software I spoke about before. But, once
again, the soft is in french ! (for the moment; if some people are
interested, I probably shall make a translation). It is a very useful
soft : you input sizes (vol, mouth, para, width of fabric, sewing
margin, shape of the balloon (3 shapes avaible now : sky, smalley,
rolland), load, number of gores ...), and you get :
* a file with size of panel, load depending from ext temp, stress
calculation, quantity of fabric needed, of Nomex, of load tapes, of
thread ...
* 2D ".dxf" files for each panel
* 2D ".dxf" files for each tabalture
* ".txt" files for each panel

The software is downlable at :
http://aerostation.free.fr/mfr/panel.zip
It is a zipped ".exe" file for dos ...
It is written in C ANSI, so the soft can be compiled on Sun stations if
you want... ;)
I probably spend more time writting this software than sewing my
balloons.

The "homebuilding movement" is a very new one in France. Before the
"bulletin" I began to print, there was only one man who has built two
hot air balloons in France in 1985~87.

On the other hand, the building of gas balloon is a long tradition in
France, especially in the North of France, where there was a lot of coal
mine. The oldest association I know is the "Association Aérostatique du
Nord de la France", which began to build gas balloons in 1886, more than
one century ago ... at this time where you did not need XPDR, lights for
night flight. There was no power lines ... Old good time !

One of the most interesting thing I appreciate in building myself the
balloons is the logical extension of my job of engineer. For me,
building is the outcome of design.

Best regards
Arnaud
-- 
Arnaud Deramecourt, Toulouse, France

ATTENTION, nouvel email : Arnaud.Deramecourt@polytechnique.org
Tout savoir sur l'aerostation : vols en ballon, manifestations, ... ?
http://aerostation.free.fr
La construction amateur de ballons : http://aerostation.free.fr/mfr

-------
Balloon-makers mailing list: use "imailsrv@deering.org" to unsubscribe