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Up, up, and away: Flying high over Albuquerque,New Mexico.A view of the fiesta from the Intel Centrino mobile
technology balloon.
This is the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the world’s largest balloon event. It’s a combination
of flying competition, incredible spectacle, and camaraderie. Balloons are here from 15 countries.
Ppl are crammed into
a 4-by-4-foot wicker basket and about 44 gallons of highly explosive propane in four tanks. And they r flying.Albuquerque
is the perfect location for ballooning because of that “box” phenomenon. Albuquerque and Rio Rancho nestle into
a wide expanse of New Mexico desert bordered by two impressive mountain ranges, the Sandias and the Jemez. These mountains
help create an ideal wind pattern that balloonists love.
The Intel Centrino mobile technology balloon soars high above.
It is one of two Intel balloons that participated in the 2004 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the world's largest
ballooning event.
The skies get a little crowded during a mass ascension. This is an air traffic controller’s nightmare.
The balloons rise when they are filled with hot air. One or two burners top the sturdy pipe hoops atop the basket. Each
burner puts out about 1 million BTUs of heat, enough to heat about 30 small homes.In addition to the traditional inverted
teardrop shapes, I can see a stagecoach, the cow that jumped over the moon, a giant bee, a dragon, elves in a toadstool, and
a space shuttle, all created from nylon.
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Intel employees and their families get “up close and personal” with the Intel balloons at
their most beautiful, inflated and night glow in the New Mexico night in front of RR5.
Intel had two balloons entered in the Fiesta. Rich and her husband Glenn, a flash technical marketing engineer in Swindon,
had come from the U.K. to fly the Intel Centrino mobile technology balloon in the fiesta. A second Intel-logo balloon was
owned and flown by Craig Kennedy, a local resident and hot air balloon enthusiast.
The Intel balloons haven’t flown
in the Fiesta for three years, victims of budget austerity. So when the request for a fiesta sponsorship came in, it took
Tim Hendry, TMG vice president and plant manager, Fab 11X, only ten minutes to send a message to other managers at the site:
“Hey guys, what do you think? If we spread it across our budgets, we can do this easily.”
After some quick
conversations, Fab 11, Fab 11X, and the Intel Systems and Technology Group, Rio Rancho, were on board as cosponsors.
Seeing
the Intel logos back has the locals buzzing. You hear it on the field, in the shuttle buses, and at the concession stands:
“Intel ... Intel.” Children line up to get the balloon trading cards the pilots and crews are handing out. It’s
fitting that the 90,000-cubic-foot Intel Centrino mobile technology balloon is here. Some of the Intel Centrino mobile technology
platform components are manufactured at the Rio Rancho fab.
Sudden thought: This is the ultimate in untethered mobility.
Ppl r so used to grabbing their notebook and flying off to a meeting. Now a big nylon Intel® Centrino™ mobile technology
logo is flying them somewhere.
And they have no control over it. Even Ann Rich, the pilot, had limited control—more
hot air, and they’ll rise, less hot air, and down they go. At any altitude, they’ll follow the wind in whatever
direction it blows.
Ppl are in the “Albuquerque box,” an amazing wind phenomenon revered by balloonists worldwide, along with
about 700 other hot air balloons. They'll come down somewhere, with any luck in a place that won’t be too hard for the
chase crew to get to. And if things go well, they'll come down like a butterfly landing on a daisy.
A lot of hard work went into getting those brands up in the sky, in front of the world’s view. But Intel got exposure
it couldn’t buy.
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