FireFly Balloons are made at The BalloonWorks in Statesville, North Carolina. More of a craftsman's workshop than a factory, The BalloonWorks is where all aspects of a FireFly Balloon are designed and crafted. It's a place with the earthy, friendly smells of wood shavings, leather and wicker. Everything that bears the BalloonWorks name is made there and the engineers still design the products in-house to ensure they're built to the exacting standards that have been progressively developing since 1972.
Over 1200 separate inspections take place during the construction of each balloon. Every piece - valves, hoses, ropes, panels - whether fabricated in the workshop or not, undergoes a rigid incoming first-piece inspection. Every fuel tank is pressure-checked. Every roll of fabric is tested for tensile and tear strength, porosity and color variations, and flaws in weaving, before it's labeled airworthy. Each panel is inspected as it's sewn into its gore, and each completed gore is again inspected as it moves from one sewing station to another. Sewing machines are calibrated twice a day, every day, to ensure consistent conformity with their sewing specifications. When each balloon is finished, it's inspected again, fully assembled and inflated on the test field, under flight conditions. This almost fanatical attention to detail results in a quality-control program that is unrivaled in the ballooning industry.It is a Head Balloons AX-8 model with a total size of 88,000 cubic feet. The basket is made of a traditional wicker and is a four foot triangle. It holds 30 gallons of liquid propane which gives about a total of 2 ½ to three hours of total flying time.
Feel free to browse our photo gallery for more pictures of our balloon and for pictures of our recent ballooning events.
photo gallery
