Balloonist ready for the open skies

BALLOONING:ALL BALLOONIST Tom McCarthy wants for Christmas is some light easterly winds so he can take his hot air balloon for a flight over Dublin city – the one day of the year that Dublin airport is technically closed.

“You can fly on other days – always remembering that flights need permission from the Irish Aviation Authority - but with less chance of the airport being used, the conditions are more favourable for balloonists,” he said.

He plans to take off from Bective Rugby Club, Donnybrook. He needs the easterly wind to send him in inland direction. Going over the sea in not good for the retinue of friends and family who follow Tom around the countryside.

A member of the The Irish Ballooning Association and the National Aero Club of Ireland, he has been “flying without wings”, as he puts it, since 1977.

While forecast weather conditions are “not great at the moment”, he says that at about 9am on Christmas Day there will be an easterly wind blowing at about two knots for a short period.

However if the Christmas Day flight does not get off the ground, there will be another opportunity: an outing to mark the 225th anniversary of the first manned balloon flight in Ireland, which was taken by Richard Crosbie who flew a hydrogen air balloon from Ranelagh Gardens, on Dublin’s southside, to Clontarf, on the north of the city. On January 23rd next Tom and fellow balloonist Malcolm White will attempt to fly two balloons from Ranelagh Gardens, some 225 years and four days after Crosbie’s effort.