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  • it has a kind of a magical, gravity defying feeling about it.

  • You can fly much more law near the ground, and you can even talk to people on the ground.

  • And you're going slow enough to appreciate what is floating past you.

  • I'm Don Cameron, and we're in the balloon factory here in Bristol Cameron balloons.

  • We do special shaped balloons and we can make almost any shape, animals and most fun, I suppose.

  • We built all sorts of animals and dinosaurs and squirrels and almost everything we did build adults, Veda one.

  • We were privileged to have that actually come back to Bristol to fly in the balloon fiesta.

  • This year I was born in Scotland.

  • I grew up in shoulders and and in Stempel in near Clarkston.

  • Andi eventually went to Glasgow University.

  • I usually put it down to drink because ballooning started from a conversation in the barn.

  • It was a group of us from the gliding club who decided to build our own balloon Onda.

  • We built the first modern hot air balloon this side of the Atlantic.

  • It was called the Bristol Bell, and it weighs, started work in 1966 and didn't finish it until the summer of 1967.

  • In the early days Way built the balloons in the basement of a house I had in Bristol and Jim that went on a fistful, employing one person to so and I did every other job in the business that wasn't sewing.

  • And gradually we built up building balloons over the years hasn't changed a great deal.

  • It's still done with sewing machines.

  • It's still done with a light fabric.

  • This is the main sewing floor.

  • Panels have cut downstairs.

  • Then they come up here.

  • They're all mart to show, which bit needs to.

  • So to each other bit.

  • You can see here the seam with it's two lines of stitching, just quite a big jigsaw.

  • When it's a special shaped balloon, they have to be particularly careful.

  • Get hold of its the right bitch together.

  • Here you see people backing a balloon into a bag, having to work quite hard to get it in there.

  • But that looks like it's a big one.

  • It's quite heavy.

  • People sometimes asked us, what shape could you not do in a hot air balloon?

  • And I have to say that a pedal bicycle would be very difficult.

  • Anything that has a bit of bulk to it, a bit of shape.

  • Bit of volume way wouldn't admit defeat on this is used for cutting up special panels.

  • It's often used for cutting up panels used for artwork.

  • Onda lettering on the balloon.

  • The critical problem about designing special shaped balloons is you can design the shape, but you have to be able to flatten it out to give the flat pattern that you cut out on the cutting table.

  • One lady sewing will have be in charge of one balloon, so they follow it from start to finish.

  • So it does get in the fund that when the sheet fly, they can see I made that.

  • It's totally different from being in an airplane.

  • Flying a hot air balloon is a kind of magical experience, but it's it's hard to explain you.

it has a kind of a magical, gravity defying feeling about it.

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