It is July 21, 1979. Alec van Caloen and I are at the centre of the Spa Francorchamps circuit with the LOTTO mission to take the singer Plastic Bertrand (« Ça plane pour moi ») at 4 pm, just before the start of the 24 hours, for a hot air balloon flight.
Ropes fall and the wind does not weaken. It was impossible to take off in these conditions! We take the car and the ball out of the circuit. The LOTTO is disappointed and asks us to at least try to fly over the circuit at low altitude.
Our calculations are right
Around 8:30 p.m., the wind still did not drop, but the rain stopped. Alec looks at me, I tell him: « It’s now or never ». With Brigitte and Christian d’Oultremont, Charlotte de Moffarts, Alec’s fiancée and the locals, we take off. Our calculations are good and we pass happily over the circuit and the roaring cars.
Mission accomplished, Alec tells me, the sponsor will be happy, let’s sit down. Bad luck, big clouds on our heads are crushing us and under us, there are only pine forests. We fly fast, too fast to dive into the rare small clearings. We are now flying at the level of the trees, too low, so that a fir tree higher than the others grabs our basket which stops for a moment, the envelope leans forward to tear us from these branches, we heat up, the balloon straightens up, the basket is freed. We resume a good speed with a vast pendulum movement. We set off again.
The landing
Still no hospital field and the day that probably does not see us and indifferent to our silent distress begins to give way to darkness… No house in sight on our axis since we left the edge of the circuit. Never seen our recovery, probably lost in the Ardennes forests. « Over there, » Alec tells me, « the lights of a village in the dark. » Phew, we get there just before complete darkness.
We are there, but it is still blowing strongly. It is absolutely necessary to land behind this agglomeration. We hit the ground quite abruptly and fortunately, we make an unexpected jump over a fence that we had not been able to see. We fall back to the ground, but the wind drags us despite the wide open parachute. Alec gets out of the basket a little too early to pull the crown string. The basket lifts up once again, slides for more than 50m and finally comes to a stop. Alex and I look at each other without saying a word after this flight of extreme concentration and smile.
Recycling
Neither the equipment nor we suffered. It’s perfect except that we notice that the retrouving team is obviously not there, that without having seen any dotted lines on the ground, curious people make us understand that we have crossed the German border and that we are near Monschau (Montjoie). A journalist from Aachen comes to interview us and will publish a full page a few days later.
Brigitte, Christian and Charlotte are still not here and we have not had any radio contact with them after the departure. The journalist takes us to the village where we find a phone to contact, not without difficulty, Brigitte and Christian’s father to tell us where we are. He waited a long time for his children, lost in the Ardennes forests, to find a home with a telephone. Finally, around midnight, our collectors arrive, Charlotte happy and moved to find her fiancé throws herself into his arms.
By car to cross the border without too much difficulty; A few explanations to the customs officers will suffice. All’s well that ends well for a pilot and his passenger who ten months before had never seen a hot air balloon up close!
René-Michel
