Wild Balloon Yonder : Continuing Development Threatens Hot-Air Flights Over Moorpark

While searching for a place to land his hot-air balloon on a recent weekend, pilot Bruce Brinkerhoff let the winds carry the craft east of Moorpark to the Wood Ranch housing tract in Simi Valley.

But it wouldn’t do to land a 70-foot balloon carrying a pilot and four passengers in someone’s front yard.

So Brinkerhoff radioed his ground crew to drive west to Olsen Road, where the balloon seemed to be headed.

“This is not a good place,” crew member Frank Jones said as he watched the balloon come in for a landing on a steep hillside along Olsen.

But, Jones said, “every landing in a balloon is a controlled crash.” And landings around Moorpark are getting more difficult all the time.

Ever since the old-fashioned sport of hot-air ballooning regained popularity in the late 1970s, Moorpark has been the favorite spot in Ventura County for the weekend entertainment.

The area’s mild sea breezes help propel the balloons once they’re airborne, and the rolling hills and fruit orchards provide a spectacular scenic backdrop.

But the continuing development of the area threatens the sport’s viability there. As housing tracts gobble up agricultural fields and open space, balloon pilots have to negotiate landings in increasingly smaller areas.

During Brinkerhoff’s recent flight, he searched for a landing place for about 20 minutes before bringing the balloon down on a hillside lot along Olsen Road.

A member of Brinkerhoff’s ground crew ran through tall weeds to meet the balloon, grabbed a rope thrown by Brinkerhoff and reeled the craft in like a kite. But the balloon still skidded 20 feet down the hill before stopping.

“It’s one thing to land a balloon this size in a desert,” Jones said. “It’s another thing to land it on a corner of a vacant lot.”

During the early 1980s, as many as seven hot-air balloon companies were flying out of Moorpark.

Now most of these balloonists launch in locations where it is easier to land, such as the desert around Lancaster, Jones said.

Only two companies--Los Angeles-based Oz Airlines, which employs Brinkerhoff and Jones, and Simi Valley-based High Times--still launch from Moorpark on weekend mornings.

But Brinkerhoff said his company may also move to the desert.

In addition to the landing difficulties, each new housing tract in Moorpark brings more residents who may not be enamored of the blasting sound from hot air balloons above their homes at 7 a.m. on weekends.

One such resident recently complained to city officials about being awakened by the balloon noise shortly after dawn on a weekend morning.

Although the balloonists generally begin their flights about 6:30 a.m. from vacant fields beyond Moorpark city limits, the wind sometimes carries them close to homes, Jones said.

Even when the crafts reach their usual altitude of 1,000 feet, the occasional blast of propane-fueled flame into the mouth of the balloon can be heard from the ground.

More heat makes the balloon rise. Less heat lets it drift downward.

The blasts sometimes set a whole neighborhood of dogs to barking, said Patrick J. Richards, the city’s director of community development.

After city officials looked into the resident’s complaint, the first in many months, they found that only the Federal Aviation Administration can regulate the balloonists.

Councilman Roy E. Talley Jr. and some other city officials said they hope that balloonists will continue to fly over the city.

“It’s part of the tradition of Moorpark,” Talley said.

Since the complaint, however, the balloon pilots are being more careful than usual.

During their first flights on the same recent weekend morning, both the Oz and High Times balloons barely crossed over the Moorpark city boundaries.

Their passengers, who paid up to $150 each for the hourlong trips, didn’t appear to notice how much care their pilots took regarding where they flew and landed.

The flight was fun, said Agua Dulce resident Stacy Ottenhoff, 18, who made the adventure with her boyfriend. “It was gorgeous, very pretty up there, very peaceful,” Ottenhoff said.

But, she said, “the landing was the best. It was exciting.”