An American adventurer crossed the English Channel carried by a bundle of helium balloons, ending a quiet and serene flight by touching down in a French cabbage patch.
Jonathan Trappe of Raleigh, North Carolina, was strapped in a specially equipped chair below a bright cluster of balloons when he lifted off from Kent, in southeast England.
About five hours later, he lowered himself into a French field by cutting some of the balloons away.
“It was just an exceptional, quiet, peaceful experience,” said Jonathan Trappe. “Didn’t you have this dream, grabbing on to a bunch of toy balloons and floating off?”
However, the channel crossing wasn’t a matter of just grabbing a few balloons. Trappe says on his website that he made a scouting trip in March and gained clearance from French and British aviation authorities and from customs and immigration offices on both sides.
His equipment list didn’t stop at balloons and a chair, but included an aircraft transponder, oxygen system, aircraft radios, emergency locator beacon, in-flight satellite tracking and a radio tracker.
Source: http://hosted.ap.org
