I had long been fascinated by the possibility of flying on the heat of the sun alone, so in 1979 I designed and built a large black balloon in order to do this. We named it Humungi.

This was the beginning of a great adventure that included making the first ever 24-hour hot air balloon  flight, setting a new world hot air balloon distance record, making a series of flights with two baskets strapped together to carry up to 11 friends, and making a series of FAA design-certification flights after we decided to manufacture balloons. We never did quite fly the balloon solely on the heat of the sun. The slide show tells some of the story of this balloon. The book tells the whole story.

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Click amidst the first image to be able to read the photo captions.