This is the story of UFO Balloons

 

Back in the year 2000 I saw the Khoom Fay style hot-air balloons being released from a beach in Thailand. I was mesmerised by the beauty of the sight of them soaring silently into the night sky.

 

I investigated the possibility of importing these Khoom Fay balloons to the U.K. but found that the cost would be quite high. I was also concerned that the paper envelope of the balloon might get damaged in transit.

 

Attempts to manufacture a low-cost copy revealed that the weight of the components would be critical. The heavier the component parts, the larger the balloon envelope would need to be to provide sufficient lift. Obviously, a larger envelope would then add to the weight.

 

The final working version consisted of a special lightweight heat-resistant plastic bag as the envelope, and a solid paraffin barbecue lighter block suspended inside the envelope on thin metal wires.

 

Whilst testing the prototypes, they were invariably spotted by various people and reported in the local media as being a UFO.

 

It was therefore decided to call finished article a UFO Balloon. I thought it was important to differentiate our copy from the original paper Khoom Fay balloons by giving our product a different name. With hindsight we should have probably chosen a different name because, subsequently, many people in the UFO watching community became very small-minded about our product and claimed launchings of UFO Balloons was discouraging people from reporting ‘real’ UFOs’.

 

In 2004 we started selling our product through ebay and also our own on-line shop. Over the next 3 years we sold thousands of UFO balloons throughout the world and sightings and media reports flooded  in.

 

In December 2006, TV footage of some memorial services for the victims of the Asian Tsunami contained images of Khoom Fay balloons being launched. As well as increasing sales of our own product, other people began importing the paper Khoom Fay balloons from the Far-East.

 

We were still able to sell our product far more cheaply than the Khoom Fay imports, so some of the importers tried to ‘rubbish’ our product as a poor-quality version of Khoom Fay. We had never marketed our product as a real Khoom Fay balloon but as a cheaper alternative. Our product was always a UFO Balloon and never a Khoom Fay balloon. We found it hilarious, however, that Khoom Fay importers would often use the name UFO Balloon in the marketing of their own products.

 

In September 2007 we decided to withdraw our product from sale. We had achieved our goal of producing a working low-cost miniature hot-air balloon and to introduce it to a public who had never seen anything similar.

 

UFO Balloons - The original and the only real UFO Balloon!

 

Ray Prince

 

 

Dutch TV news reports on UFO Balloon sighting in the Netherlands.

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TV report - (Real Player  viewing software required)

London Evening Standard reports UFO Balloon ‘hoax’  Click on image to expand to readable size.