Balloon Bust

[Motorman]

blank

[Steve Helmick]

I've seen it done, many years ago. It's not popular in the NW, but we noticed that it's best done with a borrowed Impact with a powerful electric motor and LiPo battery. Borrowed orange Impacts seem to be best for B'loon Bust. Steve

[Paul Taylor]

[Clint Ormosen]

It was a popular event in WAM contests. I did it a few times. My preferred plane was a cut down skyray with a supertigre 35. It could carry at least three balloons and their sticks on the leading edge but it made it really slowwww!
The rotating balloon stand was made of 1/2" galvanized pipe. Trey Shrader hit it one time with a Topedo 40 powered ringmaster. Busted the pipe fittings and balloon bust was over for the day. He did not win.

[Douglas Ames]

A couple contest ago at the Tulsa Glue Dobbers we used plastic golf club tubes to hold our balloons. They stood up to the Oklahoma wind better than sticks, but not a contestants model, which promptly ripped two of them out of the ground on seperate laps/ busts and folded them back along the leading edge. Amazingly the plane flew for several laps before it succumbed. Made a hell of a racket due to drag. We were a little embarrassed and went back to dowels the next season.  

[Andrew Hathaway]

A couple contest ago at the Tulsa Glue Dobbers we used plastic golf club tubes to hold our balloons. They stood up to the Oklahoma wind better than sticks, but not a contestants model, which promptly ripped two of them out of the ground on seperate laps/ busts and folded them back along the leading edge. Amazingly the plane flew for several laps before it succumbed. Made a hell of a racket due to drag. We were a little embarrassed and went back to dowels the next season.  

The golf tubes might have been ok... Elwyn got a good pic of my Flite Streak while it was carrying one around.  I want to say I wasn't the only one that picked up a tube during the flight.  Had I flown out the tank level it probably would have been fine, but I seem to remember it was wrapped around the leading edge and not the lead outs like the photo shows.  It may have moved after a few maneuvers.  Either way, I knew going in that Balloon Bust is hard on planes.  The sticks always dent leading edges, or poke holes in the covering.  Even when the balloon is bullseye'd you get splinters thrown everywhere, and the balloon can wrap around the prop.  I expected that the plane might be damaged in the process.

[john e. holliday]

I remember back in the day we tried the old dive bomb balloon bust that the AMA came up with.  We then went with balloons on sticks placed around the circle, only four balloons.  The last balloon bust we ran was on the F2C layout.   Five balloons with a vacant section.   Plane was timed for 7 laps, 60' minimum length lines.   Then break the balloons in reverse order.  Any balloon broken out of order did not count.   Score was sped times the number of balloons.

But, back on subject, the best and funniest was watch Pappy Byron Meriwether flying at a Sky Devils meet.   After the first ballon his pants fell down around his ankles.  He broke the rest of the balloons, then one of the boys went and got the handle from him, this before safety thongs.   He got a big ovation.   Randy probaly remembers that Pappy didn't have hip bones for the belt to grab hold of.   Have a lot of stories of Pappy and sure missed him when they quit flying CL. 

[kenneth cook]

             I know Dan Banjock tried it with a pan rat using a K&B rear rotor .40. He managed to get a few but these planes don't climb and dive very responsively. It was quite horrific when the prop caught the ground, then the engine went into a shaft run followed by the complete tumble roll of parts just shedding off. Pretty devastating to say the least. The engine was still good however. I rebuilt the plane and although 99.9 percent rebuilt, ( I was able to save the control horn) the plane flies great. Lessons learned . Ken

[Mike Keville]

In the '70s we flew BB at Gahr High School in So. Cal. - Balloons were tied to sticks on a rotating 2x4.  Object was to bust the first one, then flip to Inverted for the 2nd one, then back upright for the next, and so-on....Lazy Eight style.

At one event, I was leading the pack with four ballons popped....feeling pretty good about the end result....then a latecomer showed up at the field and unrolled his lines.

It was Bart Klapinski.

You know how THAT came out.

As the guy said in "Top Gun": there was no prize for Second Place.

[Duke.Johnson]

I put on a balloon bust for a friend's 80th birthday last summer.  We all had a blast.  We used our least favorite .15.