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Lawn Chair Larry and His Balloon Trip to the Sky
Lawn Chair Larry
On July 2, 1982, Vietnam veteran and truck driver Larry Walters of California set out to fulfill his life-long dream of flying. The plan was simple: Attach the 42 helium weather balloons he had purchased at an Army Navy store to his trusty aluminum lawn chair. After strapping on some water jugs for stability, he packed a pistol to shoot out the balloons upon descent, a parachute, a CB radio, sandwiches and, of course, beer.
Larry expected to hover a leisurely 32 feet off the ground, but the balloons were caught by a gust of wind and surged to an incredible 16,000 feet!
After drifting into the path of airliners landing at Los Angeles International Airport, Larry decided it was time to descend and shot out several balloons. One jet on its way to land spotted Larry and radioed Air Traffic Control to report a man in a balloon waving around a gun. Radar technicians got a lock on the balloon chair as Larry dropped his pistol. He could no longer shoot out his balloons, but luckily the ones he had managed to puncture earlier led to a slow and steady descent.
Ninety minutes after lifting off (and becoming entangled in power lines, knocking power out for a an entire neighborhood!) Inspiration I, as Larry christened his flying lawn chair, eventually touched the ground with its sole passenger intact. He hadn’t fallen to his death, been sucked into a jet engine, or even electrocuted; but he was under arrest.
After a welcome from law enforcement, Larry and his lucky landing earned their five minutes of fame, appearing on Letterman and The Tonight Show. His story, however, inspired a generation of lawn chair piloting balloonists.
Kent Couch
Kent Couch has made several lawn chair voyages. In 2008, he flew 242 miles at an elevation of 16,630 feet from his home in Bend, Oregon, to Cambridge, Idaho. With his self-made lawn chair, a ballast system of three 15 gallon containers, a dual drain system and the assistance of 156 helium cluster balloons, he flew for nine hours!
Couch even raced another lawn chair balloonist, John Fris, winning for height, but losing for distance. You can find Couch’s chairs in our Newport, Prince Edward Island, and Panama City Beach odditoriums. Freis’ chair sits in our Amsterdam odditorium after its journey over 70 miles of Oregon.
Balloon chair used by Kent Couch at Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
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From Globe, For Globe - Pulse of the Planet
Music fans in the mid-to-late 19th century had a blast playing the pyrophone-literally!
Music fans in the mid-to-late 19th century had a blast playing the pyrophone-literally! That’s because the odd sounds made by pyrophone players-pyrophonists, naturally-were the result of explosions taking place inside a series of glass tubes, triggered by a keyboard.
It was back in the 1870s that physicist and musician, Georges Frédéric Eugène Kastner, invented the pyrophone, after picking up on an earlier discovery about the behavior of hydrogen flames when applied to glass tubes.
His first invention, the “fire organ,” just didn’t seem to catch on. But, that doesn’t mean it was entirely forgotten.
Back in 2014, Brooklyn-based inventor and artist, Andy Cavatorta, revisited the pyrophone for a collaboration with the band Cold War Kids. Cavatorta, who has also collaborated with artists like Bjork and Nick Cave, specializes in sound and robotics. “Making music with vibrating gasses and plasmas seemed full of possibilities,” he says.
In doing so, Cavatorta was able to rejuvenate sounds that had been lost to the ages. His modern-day pyrophone stood 13 feet tall and incorporated 24 tubes, capable of producing “low notes so deep that they shook your bones in your flesh,” he tells Ripley’s. “It sounded like a humpback whale fronting a death metal band.”
He explains that a pyrophone works due to something called “entrainment.”
“The flame vibrates like the reed of a saxophone,” he explains. “But it vibrates chaotically, at many different frequencies. The chaotically vibrating flame sets the air column vibrating at its fixed frequencies. And the flame, surrounded by the vibrating air column, is forced into vibrating with the air, reinforcing the musical frequencies.”
All that vibration, he points out, creates quite an unusual hum. “It has layers and layers of rich harmonics,” he describes, “creating a complex ocean of sound. The flame is weightless and free to vibrate in any frequency in which the air can vibrate.”
Despite his own fascination, Cavatorta doesn’t expect the instrument to enjoy widespread popularity anytime soon. “While pyrophones would make a beautiful accompaniment for pipe organs,” he says, “I understand why we don’t use them. They’re terrifying! Like a lovely, controlled explosion contained in a bundle of glass tubing.”
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