Posted on 07/03/2002 7:16:07 AM PDT by mhking
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:40:27 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
San Francisco -- Something important was proved Tuesday in San Francisco when a young man strapped himself into a lawn chair tied to a strand of flimsy balloons and floated 50 feet above Potrero Hill.
It was not a stunt, said the man in the chair. It was a scientific experiment.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I remember "Lawn Chair Larry". A Darwin Award winner who didn't receive his award posthumously.
Absolutely the best advice he received during the entire escapade...
LOL! This writer is great!
I also heard that a flight crew on a passing airliner reported seeing him floating by on his lawn chair. Not only did they not believe them, when they landed they were tested for alcohol or drug consumption.
No, most of this is embellishment. Read the entire story:
Not at all. A lawnchair/multicell aerostat flying machine was a popular fixture around the Southern Illinois/Indiana airshow and dirtstrip airfield circuits of the mid-1960s, using essentially the same techniques as described in Larry Walters' flight, down to the Crossman pellet pistol for rapid descent. But the Walters version was better ereported upon by West Coast media and publicity resources, and so is the better remembered.
That *aircraft* was named, as well. *Hindenberg II* as I recall, though its final flight was nowhere as spectacular as that of its namesake. Like that prototype, flammible hydrogen was used for the additional [nearly double] lift produced, rather than the somewhat safer helium.
Donning a parachute, Larry climbed into his chair from the roof of his girlfriend's home in San Pedro while two friends stood at the ready to untether the craft. He took off a little earlier than expected, however, when his mooring line was cut by the roof's sharp edges. As friends, neighbors, reporters and cameramen looked on, Larry Walters rocketed into the sky above San Pedro. A few minutes later Larry radioed the ground that he was sailing across Los Angeles Harbor towards Long Beach. Walters had planned to fly Meanwhile, Larry, feeling cold and dizzy in the thin air three miles above the ground, shot several of his balloons with the pellet gun to bring himself back down to earth. He attempted to aim his descent at a large expanse of grass of a north Long Beach country club, but Larry came up short and ended up entangling his tethers in a set of high-voltage power lines in Long Beach about ten miles from his liftoff site. The plastic tethers protected Walters from electrocution as he dangled above the ground until firemen and utility crews could cut the power to the lines (blacking out a portion of Long Beach for twenty minutes). Larry managed to maneuver his chair over a wall, step out, and cut the chair free. (He gave away the chair to some admiring neighborhood children, a decision he later regretted when his impromptu flight brought him far more fame than he had anticipated.) Larry, who had just set a new altitude record for a flight with gas-filled clustered balloons (although his record was not officially recognized because he had not carried a proper altitude-recording device with him) became an instant celebrity, but the Federal Aviation Administration was not amused. Unable to revoke Walters' pilot's license because he didn't have one, an FAA official announced that they would charge Walters "as soon as we figure out which part [of the FAA code] he violated." Larry hit the talk show circuit, appearing with Johnny Carson and David Letterman, hosting at a New York bar filled with lawn chairs for the occasion, and receiving an award from the Bonehead Club of Dallas while the FAA pondered his case. After Walters' hearing before an agency panel, the FAA announced on In April the FAA signalled their willingness to compromise by dropping one of the charges (they'd decided his lawnchair didn't need an air-worthiness certificate after all) and lowering the fine to $3,000. Walters countered by offering to admit to failing to maintain two-way radio contact with the airport and to pay a $1,000 penalty if the other two charges were dropped. The FAA eventually agreed to accept a $1,500 payment because "the flight was potentially unsafe, but Walters had not intended to endanger anyone." After Larry told interviewers that he didn't have a job or money and could use all the help he could get, patrons at Jumbo's Diner in Port Richmond, California, took up a collection for him. Despite his punishment, Walters didn't rule out the possibility of another flight. "We've been looking at the Bahamas and a couple of other possibilities. It depends on whether or not I can get somebody to finance it, because I sure can't," he stated. Although Larry Walters never made another balloon flight, he did inspire someone else to try the same feat. On When one of Walsh's balloons popped, he came back down to Although Walters' flight brought him instant fame, it never proved very lucrative for him. He was paid a few hundred dollars here and there for television appearances and made a little money as a motivational speaker, but it wasn't until Timex paid him $1,000 in 1992 to appear in print advertisements featuring "adventurous individuals wearing Timex watches" that he saw any real payoff. Even then, he still hadn't recouped the estimated $4,000 it had cost him to make the flight ten years earlier. Not much else in life worked out for Larry, either Remarkably, Walters seemingly original plan to float up into the sky in a chair tethered to balloons then shoot them down one by one when he wanted to return to terra firma was eerily presaged by an E.B. White piece which appeared in The New Yorker sometime between 1936 and 1954. Popping up in a 1984 collection of E.B. White tales, the pieces titled "Professor Picard Before" and "Professor Picard After" recount the saga of an adventurous professor who believed he could travel to the outer spheres in a basket attached to 2,000 toy balloons and would be able to bring himself back down by shooting out some of them. This being a work of fiction, though Picard descends in flames, he emerges unhurt and choked with laughter. Sightings: A fictionalized version of Larry Walters' story was the basis for the musical "The Flight of the Lawn Chair Man," which played in Philadelphia in 2000. The incredible flight of Larry Walters, a 33-year-old Vietnam veteran and North Hollywood truck driver with no pilot or balloon training, took place on
It's been a LONG time back, but I recall each balloon as being capable of lifting either six or eight pounds, and of course, the sizes of available balloons vary, but 40 to 60 balloons should be enough to take care of you, and certainly seems do-able.
Balloon source follows:
Balloons here, but you'll have to supply your own
"Hey, y'all, watch this!"
I heard that also. I couldn't decide whether it was because he didn't kill himself the first time when he did the balloon stun, or because the rest of his life was so down to earth dull-and-boring. Too bad.
"Hey, y'all, watch this!"
That comes when you include some fireworks or pyrotechnics into the project, especially if the aeronaut uses hydrogen rather than helium.
Fireworks! Lovely!
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