Civil registration of unmanned hot air balloons

I think that must have just been the first prototype, AA. The later Tesco balloons were much improved! 🙂

Credit to mjballooning.com –

Now I know why Tesco phased out single use plastic carrier bags and replaced them with ‘bags for life’. It’s because the latter are too heavy and robust to use in the construction of unmanned model hot air balloons. Tesco must have been colluding with the CAA!

Oh wow! They really were that bad!

I have been lurking in the woods for all those years…watching from afar . Alas cannot be of help re the weighty  tome that you mention, sorry to be a let down! 

For general amusment though pic of the SETCO bin-bag job G-BJPF.

Chumpy.

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Good evening, chumpy. Where have you been over the last few years!

Is it correct that all the information that there is on this subject is in the privately published ‘International Guide to Unmanned Radio Controlled Model Hot Air Balloons across the World’, one of the few copies of which is in your library? I’m told that it runs to many hundreds of pages. Is there any chance that, if I make arrangements for a sufficient number of pit props to be delivered chez toi, you can lug the magnum opus onto your copier, make pdf copies of the references to G-AZYL and G-BCFE and post them here? If you can, it’ll be rather like old times!

A bientôt

AA 

Hi there AA, (long time no speak)

                        Re the ‘toy’ balloons the CAA were victims of their own rules when it was discovered that any balloon over a certain height had to carry a civil reg.  As mentioned by Farnboroughbob despite putting them into the G-FY** sequence the madness still continued.

A lot of them were produced and offered for sale by the guys at the Solent Avi Society at Southampton. I plead guilty here having bought one as a birthday present for a friend of mine, complete with CAA registration document. No doubt  more gnashing of teeth at the CAA when my pal applied to get it re-registered in his name!.

After a high level ‘bored meeting’ the empire struck back, adding a minimum weight requirement ( 2kg or similar) for bin-bag balloons, ending the need to register them.

Cheers, Chumpy.

Two such examples were G-AZYL and G-BCFE, which were designed, constructed and operated by Portslade School, East Sussex. These were, respectively, registered on 10 July 1972 and 20 May 1974, those registrations being cancelled on 25 April 1985 and 19 September 1985. The cancellations were on the basis that both had been permanently withdrawn from use. However both were photographed in Bristol, in 2011, inflated, ready for flight and carrying their cancelled registration marks.

I remember this well, it was an easy way to get yourself in the annual registration books as a spotter. I don’t think it was mandatory but was possible to register almost anything. See if you can find anything about G-ZZZZ Pointmaker, the clue in in the type name. Some balloons were well built and radio controlled, other were literally bin liners with a registration on. The CAA moved the sequence into G-FYxx around 1985 and then I think they changed the rules to ban them c1988. Not something I every had a interest in but it used to spoil my registration books with all that rubbish being registered.

Rob

Thank you all for your input. As my request is one of mere idle curiousity, I don’t think it fair to trouble the CAA press office which, I suspect, has better things to do with its time!

The Midlands Air Festival have quite a few model balloons attend, I don’t recall them wearing registration marks though.

There’s a mention in a 1984 Scottish Air News of G-BJDU, a Scruggs BL2B. Obviously not highly thought of as it is described as a “toy balloon (binliner or whatever!)”

Then in 1988 “G-BJDU has been cancelled from the UK register by the CAA in a blitz on toy balloons not confirmed extant”

As to the ones confirmed extant I have no idea! 

I remember making model hot air balloons back in the early 1960s. The use of tissue paper, solvent base glue and a naked flame could lead to a spectacular airborne finale – far better than lighten fuel on an Airfix model! 

I expect school libraries will have band books containing such ‘how-to’ knowledge theses days.

I seem to remember it was a requirement in those days – but not anymore. Indeed are there any model balloons left today? 

I have checked the CAA website and can’t find the details required. However, I did find their e-mail address:

“press.office@caa.co.uk” Why not give it a go?

H