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How To Pilot a Balloon

US President Joe Biden speaks to the press after arriving at Hagerstown Regional Airport in Hagerstown, Maryland, on February 4, 2023. - President Biden Biden congratulated the military for 'successfully' taking down... US President Joe Biden speaks to the press after arriving at Hagerstown Regional Airport in Hagerstown, Maryland, on February 4, 2023. - President Biden Biden congratulated the military for 'successfully' taking down the China balloon. A US fighter aircraft on Saturday downed over US territorial waters the suspected spy balloon that had spent days flying above the country. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images) MORE LESS
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February 6, 2023 12:25 p.m.
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Yesterday we discussed the very limited control you have over a balloon. You have some limited directional control and you control your altitude. But if you’re going east, and you can’t find a wind stream going west, you’re going east. Period. TPM Reader EJ turns out to know a lot about this and he gives us more of a sense of how this works.

I have a commercial license to fly hot air and gas (helium) balloons.

Balloons are ALWAYS at the mercy of the wind they are in. They can NEVER maneuver in any way within that stream of air. However, they have limited ability to maneuver in relation to the ground. They do this by changing to an altitude that has a wind favorable to the direction they want to go. If they want to loiter over an area, they would have to find an altitude where there was zero wind. You almost never find a wind going exactly in the direction you want to go, so you constantly change altitude to, sort of, tack in the direction you want to go, almost like a sailboat trying to sail in a direction upwind.

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