Last night was the Philadelphia Night Market and we were asked to come down with the Department of Making and Doing.

It was difficult to fly the balloon given the number of power and trolley lines, but we did have a good block on 38th Street to let the balloon up.

The Department of Making and Doing were building their Market Tower, a 21' tower built from nothing but equal length pieces of wood and zip ties. It was amazingly sturdy and was built relatively quickly. The balloon was up and down a number of times and drew the attention of a number of people wondering what we were doing, why we did it and how they could do it. Hopefully the quick start guide and preflight checklists will help them out.

Since I wasn't going to be able to get the balloon too high, I used a camera with a fish eye lens to try and capture more of the block in each shot.

But out of nowhere, a really bad rain storm blew in and we had to take the balloon down pretty quickly and the market emptied out pretty quickly. But it was a great night none the less.

Lessons Learned

ALWAYS double check your wires ties - I was bringing the balloon down pretty quickly due to an incoming storm. As I got it in my hand, apparently I had a sharp point one the top most zip tie and it punctured the balloon

When walking down an intercity street with a 60 cu/ft helium tank, be prepared to be stopped repeatedly and questioned by almost every level of law enforcement official.They were very polite, but they definitely wanted to know what I was doing.