Oregon lawn-chair balloonist plans Baghdad flight

[Hum]

Lawn-chair balloonist Kent Couch boarded a plane Thursday for the start of a journey that he hopes will end in Iraq with a safe launch and landing beneath a huge cluster of party balloons.

Couch made headlines worldwide in 2008 when he flew a specially rigged lawn chair supported by more than 150 helium-filled party balloons from the parking lot of the gas station he owns in Bend, Oregon, to an Idaho field. The trip spanned 235 miles.

Couch says Iraqi daredevil Fareed Lafta invited him to Baghdad for a Nov. 15 flight at a youth conference in the Green Zone.

Couch said he was "pretty sure I had hung up my hat on this" before Lafta called. But the timing for another airborne adventure was right.

Couch plans to rig 300 balloons to lift the two men sitting in a pair of lawn chairs for an overnight flight of 400 miles at 25,000 feet, which will require oxygen masks. The flight was first reported by KTVZ in Bend.

He has shipped a pair of lawn chairs, the framework to support them, and hundreds of party balloons to Dubai, where Lafta lives. Lafta has gotten the visas and permissions they will need for their flight.

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[Mugwump00]

Brilliant. Just as well as there unlimited amounts of Helium around. And it's not a really important gas for use in high-end medical equipment and diving etc. I suspect diving and medical equipment might be significant to this adventure. Garden chair? - sit on your helmet man...

[Hum]

I remember when at least one guy did this in the 80's ..... was funny. :laugh: