Full Of Hot Air! Testing balloon fabric to ensure a safe flight

It was a lovely midsummer’s evening when I decided to brave it and take a ride in a hot air balloon. It was a challenge I had set myself to see how well I would cope, given my fear of heights, plus it offered the added benefit of gaining a bird’s eye view of the South Downs National Park.

Seeing the balloon laid out in a park near the coastal city of Brighton, several minutes passed before enough hot air had been pumped into the ‘envelope’ to move the basket into an upright position. This enabled myself and the other passengers to negotiate the small slots on the side and eventually clamber into one of four spaces located around the central compartment, from where our pilot would control the flight!

With the basket fully loaded, we took off and before you knew it everything from people to vehicles seemed like tiny specks on the landscape. Initially weary of looking straight down, I decided to get to know the other travellers. The cosiness of each compartment certainly called for being on first name terms with my fellow ‘high fliers’.

Between the blasts of hot air from the burner, there was a real sense of tranquillity as we passed over fields, vineyards and a few very nice houses with swimming pools! We crossed close to a golfing green. Though it was tempting to shout ‘fore’ to see the reaction, I thought better of it when I considered we were within striking distance of a well placed shot!

Then, I thought about the balloon manufacturer, Ultramagic, who, without the additional antics of passengers, must ensure the hot air balloon is up to the task of launching people to the skies and keeping them there safely. Ultramagic, are the second largest hot air balloon manufacturer in the world. To guarantee the quality of their balloon cloth material, it must undergo stringent tensile and tear tests to quantify its strength and life expectancy. Fixtures are also subjected to quality checks to ensure they are able to withstand the forces placed upon them.

Thankfully, the only safety hazard we encountered was clipping some trees as we made our descent, and landing with a positive, if somewhat abrupt, thump, ensuring we were still wide awake!

Similar test principles hold true for parachutes. If you can imagine a skydiver in freefall, plunging to the earth at a frightening velocity, the importance of the parachute opening and smoothly gliding the skydiver back to earth safely is critical. The same tests, described above, can be applied here too, enabling the manufacturer to determine the material’s strength tolerance.

Needless to say I am not ready to test that one out in the field just yet, but pleased with my last achievement, it may end up on the list!

If you have any comments or questions about textile testing, please use the comments area shown. We look forward to hearing from you.

Touched by your presence dear...

I am always touched by your presence dear…


We’ve all seen them in the newspapers, the smiling fools who followed the satnav and got the lorry stuck under a bridge or drove the car up a railway line “cos that what the screen said…”. Well I came within an inch (actually about 50 metres) of joining this august group.

We were going to see a concert at the London O2 arena - that’s the large venue that started out life as the Millennium Dome, but now stages concerts and all sorts of spectacular events. We had decided to drive into London, doing a bit of sight-seeing on the way in, and to park at the O2 itself. I had programmed the Satnav for the arena, but there is still quite a lot of building going on in the area, and the road layout had changed. Anyway, I was following the touch-screen satnav, hopefully to one of the large car parks surrounding the dome, and the satnav was struggling to make sense of our position with its internal map that was a bit out of date. I thought that the road surface was a bit poor, but I kept following the satnav’s instructions anyway. We came to a small rise, a bit like a hump-back bridge, and just as we reached the top, there was the river Thames about 50 metres away with nothing to stop me from seeing if Toyotas can float.

After a sharp intake of breath and an even sharper application of the brakes, I glared at the satnav and poked its touch screen with rather more force than is strictly necessary. After a bit of tactical reversing and contemplation, I did think about that touch screen, and how hard a poke is too hard.

The manufacturers of these screens need to answer the same question so they can design and make them sensitive enough to use, but resilient to the kind of abuse from positionally challenged motorists. Well, I had to reflect on the irony of the situation. Mecmesin have sold systems for exactly that job to the manufacturers of touch screens. Talk about being “hoist with my own petard”, or rather having to replace the satnav because I can’t use my brain when driving. Fortunately, the touch screen manufacturer had allowed a good margin for “exceptional actuation” of the screen.

All’s well that ends well, the satnav is fine, and I avoided making an unscheduled appearance in the Thames or the newspapers, and determined to engage my brain before first gear…

Centre Court, Strawberries & Scragging

It’s the time of year for that quintessentially English event, The Lawn Tennis Championship Meeting held at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Or to use a rather shorter but perhaps better known description, - Wimbledon fortnight...

The word fortnight refers to the competition that is relayed around the world by television and radio, famed for tennis, strawberries and Pimm’s – (that’s the drink traditionally served with what looks like a sliced fruit salad in a glass.) But for the Wimbledon staff, the “fortnight” is actually a year long job.

Have I got Newton for you…

I don’t know about you, but when I have been to a school reunion, I have always been a bit defensive. I mean, its not exactly a boost to your ego to find out that the "spotty lad" who was in your class is now an eminent surgeon, or a successful author or has been honoured with an OBE. Consider for a minute what a reunion of the class of 1650 at the King’s School Grantham could have been like if the "lad" turned out to be a boy named Isaac Newton. The list of his accomplishments would make anyone feel a bit of an underachiever. Forget about being head prefect, Newton was:

• A fellow of Trinity College Cambridge
• A member of the Royal Society
• Lucasian Professor of Mathematics
• Member of Parliament
• Warden of the Royal Mint
• Knighted by Queen Anne