Hot air balloons

ihatework

ihatework

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Had a situation at the yard today whereby a hot air balloon came very low over. Not sure if they were looking for a place to land or just watching the ‘pretty horses dancing’.

Anyway they caused mayhem.

4 valuable youngsters went mental.
4 valuable Broodies carrying valuable foals (2 due imminently) went mental, one of which ran through a fence.

Thankfully all appear to have got away without serious injury.

Is there a way to track / report this sort of incident?
 
The balloon should have an identifying number somewhere but good luck finding out what it its! We had a balloon come down in our field, knocking down a drystone wall in the process. 4 horses were upset, especially the Clydesdale mare, who was never the same about balloons after that. The beggars scuttled off without offering to pay for the wall, or check that the horses were ok. Of course we were too busy sorting out horses to stop them as they drove away in their support van. We never did manage to find out who they were. You could contact the Aviation Authority to see if they can help.


ETA, I hope all the horses are ok and not too upset.
 
Eep, I don't know how you go about reporting them, but I hope that you do and can make sure that it doesn't happen again.

IME hot air balloons are far more dangerous to horses than low flying conventional aircraft - we're on an RAF flight path and see all sorts which the horses ignore, but the hot air balloons can be a ruddy menace.

I hope that all the neds are ok.
 
Thank you.
Yes fingers crossed have got away with it. Might have foals tonight, had a good old jiggle about in there!
 
If you can track them down you should be able to kick up a fuss and become a no go area, many years ago 1 landed in one of my fields which had horses in, including an in foal mare, this was despite the surrounding fields being empty of stock because they could see the gate to the road meaning easy access for collection.
I was furious and they arranged for my land to be avoided, I only have 16 acres so not a large area but ever since any balloons flying nearby turn away so the no fly zone is obviously adhered to even after what must now be 25 years.
 
We had the same problem,flew very low so they "could see the horses",4 TB yearling colts,salebound,crushed into,through and over fences.unfortunatley for the balloon they landed in a locked paddock and our boss refused to let them out until he had full details.Never seen another balloon!
 
We had a heli ambulance decide to put down in our fields this week! The horses were surprisingly chilled and they are on a mission to save lives so - Ok. Hot air balloons... slightly different.

As DSB says - they have little control of where they land so there is no law preventing that. But if they are in private land they cannot come and collect the balloon / basket until you give them permssion. You can't stop the folk leaving - that would be false imprisonment. But hang on to the ballon & basket until they pay you a reasoable sum for trespass or damage.
 
They are a hazard to horses, I used to live in an area of the country which was the heart of bloodstock breeding with much of the land taken up by stud farms, there was also a busy and active hot air balloon club. There was an unspoken agreement in place that they would stay away from horses due to the potential carnage they could cause.

There can't be that many people with hot air balloons maybe you could find out if there was a club and speak to them.
 
Where I keep my horses has had one crash land in their paddock before! We agist in the middle of wine country and there are heaps of tourist balloon rides.
 
I bet if you Google you'll find out who the local companies are. If nothing else write a stern letter to them all telling them to stay away or be liable for damage.

Helicopters are fun around here. We're in Chinook territory and they fly very low....
 
They're a PITA.

We used to get a lot more over here than we do now, thank god.

A good few years ago when I had my old boy (two horses ago this was), one came right over our field. He was a bombproof old boy, you could've dropped a megaton bomb right next to him and he wouldn't have flinched - as long as you didn't hit his feed bowl - but this proved too much even for him.

I was there when it happened. We never saw it coming, it just loomed over the trees, and I heard a hissing sound (like a dragon!) and suddenly there it was, looming over the field with all the people in the basket!

It scraped over the hedge, and landed in the field next door to where the horses were (who were going ballistic, even Old Boy, who was having what was probably the ONLY time in his entire life he'd ever got up speed enough for a flat-out gallop, bless him).

Thankfully we don't see them very much at all now, sometimes see them in the distance but not close up anymore; think the firm ceased trading. We are right in the flight path of a regional airport and having balloons around can't have been helpful to them, I personally can't understand how they ever got permission to operate in the first place TBH, so perhaps that had something to do with it.
 
SEL said:
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Helicopters are fun around here. We're in Chinook territory and they fly very low....
Click to expand...

TBH chinooks arn't too bad, the horses do get used to them. We used to live on the flight path between a popular diving quarry and the local decompression chamber.
Had chinooks going overhead very very low on a regular basis! skimming the telephone wires low! ponies got to the point that they didnt even bother looking up.
 
We were fortunate enough to be next door to a launch site for a bit. The horses got plenty of opportunity to see them when they were inflating and going up. I'm sure they'd still react to one crashing in the paddock, but probably not too much. They ignored an air-ambulance a couple of years ago... but then again one of mine stands his ground against a tractor/topper - I have to go around the bit he's eating when topping the field!! :D
 
I dated someone years ago who was into ballooning and they have maps with instructions on how high/ low they can fly and i remember (this was years ago) there were several farms we went over and it was marked on the map we had to fly high over them to avoid disturbance. Not sure if thats any help but maybe ask a local balloon club for information?
 
A few years ago we were on Gower - prime paragliding territory. As we were heading up a steep hill, a paraglider was coming in to land on the brow of the hill. Arch and I were in the lead. We knew one of the horses with us was terrified of kites and his owner had already jumped off just in case. The second horse we were with was very strong and his owner not certain she'd keep control if he thought about legging it and the third was very new so we didn't have a clue what she'd do, so it was down to Arch and me. I took a deep breath, carried on pointing up the hill as the thought of them legging it down the hill didn't bear thinking about and tried to be as breezy as possible with my friends. Luckily, Arch was just fascinated and as soon as he landed wanted to check out whether the paraglider had any food for him.

To be fair to the paraglider, we emerged from a thicket pretty much directly below him and were travelling in the same direction at about the same speed so he couldn't see us. He had quite a shock when he landed, turned round and saw us and was very apologetic. I asked if I could bring Arch to see he was just a human and he obliged, once Arch had done that, the other horses relaxed too. We've seen a few others since then and Arch has never worried about them. I think he just goes, "oh another flying human, they're weird."
 
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