Wairarapa Balloon Festival

 Originally, I was planning on going to Classic Fighters at Omaka over the weekend, sadly those plans fell through.

So, for the last week, I have been keeping an eye on the weather for the Wairarapa to judge if it would be good enough for the Balloon festival to go ahead. It was very on and off, but yesterday it looked promising for today and the organizers announced their intentions to let them fly.

So, I risked it and got up at 4am this morning for the drive over to Martinborough, where they were planning on lifting off at the golf course. At 6:30am the go ahead was given, so everyone got to work inflating the balloons. The first one lifted off just before 7am.

Was nice to see a total of 18 balloons get up and head towards Featherston way.

Here are the ones I saw:

G-OPAW Cameron Z-105
N9129V Aerostar S-52A
ZK-FAA Kubicek BB30Z
ZK-FAI Boland 38-8
ZK-FAN Thunder and Colt AX8-90 Series II
ZK-FBA Kavanagh C-77
ZK-FRE Kavanagh D-84
ZK-KKH Cameron O-65
ZK-LAR Cameron C-80
ZK-LOP Boland 52-12
ZK-OAK Cameron Z-275
ZK-PNG Ultramagic H-77
ZK-PPI Cameron C-70
ZK-RYZ Kavanagh C-77
ZK-SEL Cameron N-90
ZK-UCF Kubicek BB20E
ZK-WBC Cameron Z-90
ZK-ZVE Cameron N-133

The only special shape, buster the dog! G-OPAW, a new one for me!

N9129V, also new for me.

ZK-FAA, new one for me!

ZK-FAN new one for me!

ZK-FRE, remember seeing that registration on a 737! New one for me

ZK-UCF, new one for me!

ZK-WBC, new one for me!

ZK-ZVE, my last new one!

Just had to get this shot, just through the trees, showing 12/18 of the attending balloons!

Was fun chasing them to Featherston, but an incredible sight to see in the sky as I was driving home. I didn't see where they landed, but at a guess it was towards Lake Domain reserve at the top of Lake Wairarapa.

Currently i'm planning on going up to Whanganui on Monday in hopes of catching the Classic Fighters aircraft on their way home. Most of the aircraft dropped in for fuel there on way down to the airshow, so hope they do same on the reverse!