while the rest of the team is back at the weather part of the safety trailer. For evening events, the team starts about 3 p.m. with the same devices and reports to give to the Balloonmeister and other officials. John Elrick says the best part of the job is seeing all the people at Balloon Fiesta, giving out pins to kids, and working as part of a larger team. Landowner Relations Nancy Wertz and her team, consisting of Larry Merry, Janette and Orbin Stone, Jim and Nancy Holley, Wally Book, and Karen Brown, are the folks who monitor and visit unhappy landowners. The landowners where balloons land, or in some cases fly over a remuda of horses or goats or sheep or emus, sometimes are upset ON by their livestock responding to the noise of the balloon burners, or balloon trucks driving over recently irrigated pasture, or balloons hitting a house or some other object while landing. It is the duty of the Landowner group to VID DICKENS A visit those folks and see if there is some way to settle S: D emotions down, or explain what happened, or in other O T ways to mollify the landowners. This team also heads PHO the effort to lay out white sheets or other signs that balloons are welcome to land on their property, in case Above: Using the theodolite to gather weather data. the landowner is friendly to balloon landings. Below: Dropping into a friendly neighborhood. PHO other officials in the trailer. This team uses 1) Weather T Underground (which has sites in Corrales, Rio Rancho, O: BENNIE B Bernalillo et al), 2) the National Weather Service for Albuquerque, and 3) the Weather Profiler. The profiler belongs to the City of Albuquerque, usually set up at O Double Eagle Airport, but during Balloon Fiesta, it is S moved to the north end of Balloon Fiesta Park. This device uses radar, looking at the reflection of air particles surface to 1500 feet AGL and higher in increments of speed and direction. Wind sensors are positioned around the field, along with a lightning detector. The team begins collecting weather data each morning beginning around 3:30 - 4:00 a.m. Three weather people monitor the computers, a fourth person inputs the data, and a fifth runs the theodolite, which is basically a precision telescope mounted on a transit which monitors a pi-bal (pilot ball, essentially a large latex balloon) for wind speed and direction using horizontal and vertical plane measurements. They report these data to the Dawn Patrol balloon pilots, usually already flying early in the morning. The team also reports data from the WINDSONDE (more accurately defined as a radiosonde), a battery- powered telemetry instrument carried aloft on a small helium balloon which records temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, humidity and geographical position. This device is then released from the helium balloon and dropped to the ground, later to be retrieved (by the landowners relations group). Brad is at the briefing tower, giving weather reports orally to pilots, ® 222 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta