Recently HAWK began work on our firefly hot air balloon N90555. Upon donation the envelope was found to be porous and not flightworthy. Slowly HAWK was donated a basket and then another along with fuel lines and tanks until we had all of the pieces necessary to put together our balloon. However with these parts the problem of the porous fabric remained but never fear HAWK was given new balloon coating from firefly to be applied to the inside of HAWK’s balloon.
The entire inside of the balloon had to be coated in the latex based clear coating that was sprayed on and rolled in taking four days to paint over 70000 square feet of fabric until on the evening of day four when HAWK members left the balloon and the balloon was stood up in Fruita’s Reed Park.
One week from completion the skirt was replaced with a non-flammable version and the final fuel system, freshly rebuilt, was certified finishing the annual inspection and legalizing flight. HAWK’s newest addition to our flying fleet will be providing instruction shortly and the majority of the flight costs for at least the first few months will be donated by Mr. Eddie Clements
