Winter Project – Hot Air Balloon Basket Repair

March 19, 2012 by admin

For my winter project, I decided it was time to rebuild my 11 year old FireFly 5.0 hot air balloon basket that has about about a 1000 hours. The hoses are a year old, the floor, runners, and load ropes are in great shape. The vertical wicker was looking pretty tired and damaged and had a lot of broken horizontal wicker. This project took a little over 2 months to complete (not working on it full time, I had other hot air balloons in the shop to work on as well). Glad the project is done  and looking forward to a great flying season.  If you would like to fly with us this summer, check out our specials on https://www.lifecycleballoons.com

Basket before rebuilding
Some of the basket damage
All the old wicker removed
Basket rebuild complete