 | | Monday 1st September 2003
Balloon record attempt - the pilots | |
|  | | Simulation of the record attempt |
| | Biographies of the two piots: Andy Elson and Colin Prescot. |
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Andy (49), from Wells, Somerset, is pilot and project director of QinetiQ 1, responsible for the design and build of the balloon.
Andy began his career as an apprentice at the Rolls Royce Technical College in Filton, Bristol and then went on to study Aeronautical Engineering.
During the 1980s he became an enthusiastic balloonist.
After competing at world-class level, he began to research and develop the survival systems required for high-altitude flights.
In 1991, he piloted the world’s first hot air balloon flight over Mount Everest.
Andy set a new all-time flight duration record in 1998, and promptly broke it the next year on his Cable and Wireless flight with Colin Prescot, which lasted 17 days, 18 hours and 25 minutes.
For this they were each presented with the Royal Aero Club Gold Medal, awarded just 40 times in the last 100 years.
Since 1999, Andy has worked with American adventurer Steve Fossett on his solo attempts to fly a balloon around the world, designing and building the Solo Spirit gondola and advising Fossett during his most recent flight from eastern Australia to Brazil.
Colin (53), from Stockbridge, Hampshire is Managing Director of Flying Pictures Ltd, the world’s largest operator of hot air balloons and leader of aerial film production and facilities.
He will co-pilot QinetiQ and relay pictures of the flight back to earth. Colin began ballooning at the age of 25 when an Afghan princess took him on his first flight.
Colin continued his interest in hot air balloons by founding Flying Pictures, which counts Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Cliffhanger’ and the last 8 James Bond films among its credits.
Over the years Colin has managed to combine his background in advertising with his hobby, operating many of the commercial advertising balloons seen in the summer skies and at balloon festivals around the world.
In 1981 Colin made the first ever hot-air balloon flight through a whole night, and later set the record for longest balloon flight in the British Isles, which still stands.
Colin considers the QinetiQ 1 mission "the ultimate professional challenge". | | | |
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